The Problem

Did you not read the text you just quoted?


And you would still have normal ladders.

 

I have read through all of the posts. I do not think building should be nerfed at all. I just think the destruction should go faster(and that might be solves with the new siege equipment, so why change anything before we see that effect?).

I really think that buildings is the thing that makes this game stand out and increases the fun.

Another fix could be to make it easier to be an offensive builder(but nto increase their ability to kill).

But i got an idea.
Builders do not currently have a charge ability. So why not give them one that allows them to charge upp a strike that increases their dammage to buildings?

A few examples:
A charge that gives them a small area dmg effect.
A charge that makes them one hit a stone block.

 

I could type up a massive essay on this but instead I'll keep it short.

Archers

Currently archers can spam arrows like there is no tomorrow. I'm sure you have all seen this. Archers are a ranged class and therefore for the sake of balance be mobile except when firing.

Think of siege tanks in Starcraft. They are big meaty damage dealers that get into a lot trouble if things get close enough to them. Archers should be seige tanks. Mobile but vulnerable to melee when dealing a lot of damage.

Proposed Changes - Make archers require more time to charge up a shot that will actually do damage. Arrows should have a velocity threshold to meet in order to do damage.
Archers should move even slower when firing OR charge up their shot much slower when moving.

A builder or knight who gets close to an archer should destroy him easily. It just plain and simple, ranged should beat melee at range. And melee should beat ranged at melee.

Currently its not like this, I've lost count of archer who've killed me spamming arrows as a knight in melee range and vice versa. I think it is really dumb and needs to be fixed.

Of course archers should still be able to arrow climb.

Knights

Shielding as it stands I think we call all agree is more or less fine with the exception of shield bashing. Shield bashing needs some tweaking although from what I understand thats an emergent feature that will be hard to solve easily.

Getting shield bashed is hilarious and frustrating, and should be tweaked to be more predictable.

Bombjumping. I agree with blue luigi. Bomb jumping slightly over the height for fall damage seems perfect. Right now you get insane horizontal movement if you know what to do, that needs a fix. As much as I love paratrooping into an enemy base, I can't help but feel sorry for them. We should keep bombjumping as a feature though, because it is totally rad.

Bombs as a weapon, with the introduction of powder kegs bombs should be more anti - player than anti building. Leave the sabotuering to powder kegs. The range on bombs feel kinda strange.

A change that might improve bombs as a gameplay item would make them have a kill range, a shrapnel damage range and a light wound range depending on how close you are to the bomb. Right now instagibbing from bombs while awesome is kinda funky!

Jabs and slashing, Kinda horribly random and wierd. Much like the above Melee vs range debate jabs should beat slashes at close, but slashes should cut right through a jab. You probably shouldn't get stunned by jabs OR they should be less spammable by a factor or 10%-15% to start with, then go from there.

Builders

Currently builders are pretty good as is. However I think there should be some small nerfs put in place.

Placing stone should be a little less spammable, I think 1.5-3 stone blocks per second would be a good range. It allows for a high skill cap while hard capping it so that its not ridiculous.

All other blocks should be spammable so that builders can still get ladder spam up a wall. Anyone who has played a builder knows that laddering up a wall is extremely dangerous high risk already. Nerfing ladder spam would be a bad move really. It would discourage offensive builders too much.

Builder hammer smash should be brought somewhere a little closer to knights jabs for combat.

Conclusion

We all love the game as it stands, most of the changes I propose slow the game down a little but will improve balance. I believe my proposed balance suggestions will change the gameplay for the better without nerfing anything into oblivion. Source: Playing the game a lot for a long time.

TL;DR: I was gonna keep it short but I didn't.

Please note that the above changes are assuming that essentially nothing else drastically changes in the way of how actual blocks interact and stuff.

 

Standing still while jabbing would be very bad.In alot of ways already stated.
Clashing while slashing would be VERY good cause sometimes when two people slash it comes down to lag / coin toss on who hits for insta-kill / one and a half heart of damage.

 

My problem with the ideas in the original post and others like it is that they only regard preexisting elements of the game. It looked like a big discussion on which classes should be nerfed until I saw Geti's post. If we simply made it take longer to place down stone or let knights chomp away at castles, none of the fundamental problems would be fixed. Like Geti said, buildings are pretty resilient up until the enemy gets close. Then it's a slippery downhill slope from there on and your building gets broken into or collapsed. Making those little changes do not address the overall difficulty of getting close enough to damage buildings in the first place. If anything, it just encourages tunneling and makes the builder a less interesting class to play as.

My point is that we need to be thinking more progressively. If you ask me there is no way to balance the game using what we have without ruining the fun. I actually agree that in the long run builders should take longer to build, but for now it's not a good idea. It's true that they're a good offensive class for the wrong reasons right now, as in drawbridge spamming up enemy walls, hollowing out castles using the protective stone bubble method, skybridges, and erecting walls super fast. Builders should be using more siege weapons with their large coin income and less of those cheap hard-to-counter tactics. However, giving knights a buff or builders a nerf doesn't help so much in terms of balancing the game, but rather makes it more irritating and useless to play as a builder overall. First we must give the builder new methods before we can take away his old ones.

Anyway, I agree with a lot of what Geti had to say, but I don't think it would apply perfectly to the current build of KAG. I know he probably implied that there are going to be other changes alongside what he mentioned because most of what I am about to say is already planned, but I'm going to go ahead and state what I think goes well with it.

Some Actual Ideas I Have/Agree With:
-Wooden structures as a low tier building tool and stone structures as a high tier, expensive building tool would definitely help. Things I would consider wooden include the current team doors, drawbridges, and wooden versions of the current stone blocks and back wall. Wooden structures could be damaged by knights through slashing or w/e and by archers with fire arrows, but they would not be able to damage stone structures, including a stone version of the team door. Battering rams as a siege weapon would be a good counter against stone doors. This lets builders put up a quick make-shift defense at the front lines with the risk of it getting toppled if your team isn't around to help you attack. This also gives knights a little more to do without making stone structures less useful.

-I think removing team-exclusive vertical pathways is a good idea for enabling battering rams to do their job effectively. This will be a hard one to implement though. I have no idea if notch climbing is intended to stay or not, but assuming it is we could make it so that team doors still open when it's surrounded by 2 blocks opposite from each other, but remain solid collision-wise. This removes team door notch climbing but allows effective archer slits (which are not really on my list of overpowered structural defenses due to it limiting the archer's field of view, especially on tall structures). If people still complain about archer slits, the team doors in notches can be specifically programmed to stay open for a longer period of time so archers can fire back. Back on subject, drawbridges are a different story. Maybe we can just make them more vulnerable to knights again.

-Increasing fall damage is a good idea for countering skybridges. I know I once suggested to reduce the archer's fall damage, but that is partly because most structures are not designed to be archer-friendly. If the knight's fall damage was increased, people would be more likely to leave the sides of structures open for wall sliding. I still think archers need to be able to fall at least as far a shield gliding knight without taking damage as that would only be fair. The saying "The smaller they are, they harder they fall" is the game's current flawed logic. The overall physics of the game may need to be changed. I really like getting catapulted into castles, but it feels wrong when you can somehow survive longer falls after being fired out.

-In regard to countering skybridges, I think some sort of a vertical-firing ballista would be very handy. Basically it would fire a giant archer's arrow with the same physics applied, except it would be able to damage buildings. It would work as a more expensive variation of the catapult that has way more freedom of aim and concentrates all its damage into one spot. It should drastically slow as it passes through back wall. Plop one of those on the top of your castle and you have a nice defense against skybridges because of its upward arc.

Anyway, I don't want to make an insanely long post right now and bore you guys with ideas I think a lot of you already want implemented.

What I mainly wanted to get across:
The game certainly isn't ideal the way it is, but I wouldn't make certain balance changes until new features are implemented first to give us alternatives. Don't focus all your efforts on working with what we have. Think forward.

 

So far what I have seen in this thread after I posted:

Geti's post. Amazing. Do everything you said there, I have complete confidence in you. Just don't nerf builder's abilities before you add more siege weapons. Balancing needs to wait a little bit longer. So many things will be implemented in the future it almost isn't worth balancing yet.

Arguments and counter arguments over the same things, mostly bomb jumping and how op builders are and archer spam ect. All of these things will go away soon. We seriously need to just have 1 person go through and summarize this entire thread.

As of now it takes about an hour and a half to read the whole thing, guys keep it shorter please.

Many of the things people say are op are only true if the player is a good one. Structures are a perfect example of this; As far as elitism goes, I have never played an elite game as contrary probably has, you would rarely run into this sort of thing, and designing the game for these matches might be more bad than good, especially now.

 

i approve of the idea to buff fall damage and removing how ladders stop fall damage, that in itself will solve many of the problems with team door ladders simply because people who have to slide down the wall would take to long getting to the front. in order to combat that the design of the buildings would change to doors on the bottom and lots of drawbridges.

i DO think that team door ladders should remain. if you have a wall with team door ladders the archers on the wall will be trapped if the wall is breached but the invaders would have to make sure and not just charge into the hold but mop up around the outside as well. i have posted in the forums how i think that offense needs a buff for more staying power but i do believe that a nerf on building would allow that staying power that offense currently lacks.

i also agree with nerfing archers (even though i am one) simply because of the spam, i believe that the first charge stage should do NO damage. i also believe that archers should have a little more safe height to fall from due to the tree climbing ability, climbing to the top of a tree should be dangerous but rewarding if done correctly.

the general opinions of nerfing knight jabs and bombs jumps as well as slowing builder strikes and building i agree with. i hate spam. other than that i don't play knight or builder much so i leave the details to the more experienced among us.

OVERVIEW:
-Mechanical changes
--shorter fall damage height
-Archers
--first charge stage do no damage OR charge delay
--increased safe fall height (proportional to others fall height)
-Knights
--Nerf knight jab speed
--Nerf bomb jump
-Builders
--Nerf strike speed
--Nerf build speed

 

i forgot to address the wood/stone constructions :p, i agree with Paralogia if building went in 2 stages (build the wood frame and then maybe the wood or stone structure) i could see how that would increase build time, also allow the frames to be used as ladders (but more expensive) i may add that maybe trees should grow faster and stone be harder to mine in order to support this idea, as it is now stone is dime a dozen and trees hard to come by when there is a lot of building going on.

 

Buildings are the way a team upgrades their units, isn't it?

Your towers and shops increase archer defense, increase unit mobility, increase unit health regeneration rate, increase unit respawn rate, increases average attack damage (bombs, stomps, stonedrop and so on), and everything in between and around. Isn't that a problem, that upgrades accumulate for the defending tower? You cannot level up your attack. Without resorting to ignoring these defenses by tunneling and skybridging, how does an attacker avoid fighting an uphill battle?

You can fully balance this by subtracting from the builders ability to build and upgrade until the builder is inconsequential, but it'd be better to add to the gameplay by being able to enhance your attacks. The first thing that come to mind is siege weapons, but not limited to.

I actually have a lot more to say but, essentially this is all that matters right now.

 

Sounds legit, but they would have to take longer to be destroyed than a team door (it would be ridiculous if it was easier to destroy wood than stone). Also, if builders had to wait 1 second to place blocks that would make team building a lot more fun (you would need lots of well cordinated builders to make rush towers for example).

 

Abilities such as bomb jumping should only be taken away when there is another class to give them to.

Normal builders could have a short interval between placing blocks, only if a higher class above the builder can place them at a rapid rate like the current builder.

 

we shouldnt nerf buildings, we should give more ways to destroy them, add wooden buildings that are impervious (mostly) to explosions, and rock structures that are impervious to fire, add water to put out fire. add Balista's that can fire wooden spears that can be scalled by scouts* and archers, battering rams to smash through team doors, but cant touch backgrounds add arrow canopys and collapsing underground mines and minecarts for fast transport, add a forge workshop to refine stone into much stronger stone blocks, or turn wood into charcoal for torches and lamps, as well as turning iron into things from rails to carts to buckets full of burning oil.
*scout class is an idea i had that would be an archer w/0 a bow but would have 3 hearts and a small stabbing weapon (does 1 heart per full charge and a half heart per stab, like a knights sword but weaker and with less range) the point of this class would be to have the archers effects of arrow climbing and tree climbing actually be useful for offensive reasons, because right now all and archers scaling abilities are good for is camping towers and the sort

 

Xato, Mcdaniells, etc.: Please give reasons with your opinions instead of just saying "i think building is ok just because".

 

well... you could limit the number of builders per team (to like say 3) and/or make the amount of resources they can hold decrease!

 

This might be a possible idea that can come into play much farther down the road of development or very near, but maybe the answer to balancing out the action of digging/destroying between builders and knights (archers maybe) could be found within a new shop.

Ya its probably been thought of before but I'd rather see it in a thread like this then the suggestions section in google moderator. The idea is that a knight can purchase (or build with gathered res) a tool like a pick,shovel, etc. This would then give a tunneling knight the ability to switch this item and allow him to dig faster than with a sword. It would not be as efficient as an actual builder obviously. Granted this would probably totally put OPs into disuse period, and builder ability might also have to be altered. But hey, this game isn't even close to being complete and there's still lots of progress to be made, topics and ideas like this just make the final outcome all the more worth while.

 

I have some suggestions I thought I would illustrate visually. Please consider these!


Would these work?