The Problem

I find the hole one a bit cruel, as you are just forced to stand there and watch yourself die. I call it Normandy because one or two archers can essentially spam shot out of a fortress and keep several knights and builders pinned down. The builders end of dying because the knights panic and save themselfs, and if thier knights come out to fight it just turns into excessive slaughter, with no drawback to the enemy. I think archery should be more like the server I was on last night, friendly fire. As for the bomb, perhaps make it so knights cant block while throwing a bomb.

 

1. Don't get stuck in a hole.

2. A real life castle would not be easy to siege. Archers need to be powerful otherwise no-one would play them.

3. Why would a knight not want to save himself? Also that's got nothing to do with the game that's the quality of the player. If you were a builder and you were playing with me as knight i'd make it my personal task to shield you from arrows.

4. Friendly fire would be insane you'd always have to worry about where you're shooting and you wouldn't be able to stand behind a shielding knight and fire because you'd hit him instead. We tried friendly fire once and it was horrible, no-one liked it.

5. Throwing bombs would be pretty hard and they'd be a waste of time if you can't hold a shield and a bomb at the same time. Knights have two hands why can't they shield with one hand and hold a bomb with the other? It's senseless to think they can't do that. Why are you sitting there waiting for them to bomb you in the first place, if a knight pulls out a bomb DO something! Attack him to kill him or run away. Stop sitting there being helpless and then complain about it.

 

I like Zefree's idea, except I'm unclear as to who is for/against each element. scienceboy brought up team class limitations, and I was against it... I take it that's what the ++ is for?

EDIT: Like Neat said, friendly fire is ridiculous. I went into a server the other day and was taking damage/dying left and right, and I couldn't figure out why. Turns out the archers standing behind my builder were shooting through me, killing me over and over. I kept telling them to stop and take higher ground, but new guys...

 

I think that ++ mean :

-Stuff write here == Pro ++ Cons

 

Another idea I had today was:

Building stones act similar to ladder placement. You can't stack stones higher than maybe 6-8 blocks without placing "heavy stones" as fundament under them or between them. The heavy stones would cost about 30-50 stone each. That way a builder can "wizard" a small wall at the frontline but bigger buildings above 6-8 blocks would need some kind of fundament to be built higher that comes with a pretty high ressource cost.

Making a 2 stone wide high tower wouldn't be that expensive but imagine the buildings that are 10 stones wide and they need heavy stones as fundament to be stacked higher. This would give the knights the possibility to shield stack that some knights can jump over it or bomb jump it while not removing the builders fast placement.

I think that would give the game an additional strategical element, since you can place a small wall at the frontlines but making huge buildings out of nothing at the front needs additional time, planing and ressources!

Only thing im not sure of is, how would this work out with backwall and roofs of stone?


<-- Needs heavy stone to be built higher than 6 blocks

<--- Heavy stone


<--- can be placed normally

 

Or make builder use more back wall. It just rage me when they skybridge with no blackwall, and then get bomb or cata.

 

I've seen a lot of people complaining about how knights can't destroy stone blocks and how this makes reaching the enemy castle kinda boring. Now, I really like to play knight and pretend i'm rambo and all just as much as you guys but you gotta remember this is a team game. Knights are already kinda good since they can break wood, rocks and dirt (what means they're even able to make tunnels just like builders) but they still need builders to help them out and that's fine.

About nerfing builders... maybe that 1 second between block placement would do the trick, but i'm not quite sure about how this would affect gameplay in general (considering building is one of the main interesting things about KAG).

 

i don't think we should be discussing delays for builder yet.

maybe after we have wood tiles to place, THEN you could have the stone blocks have a delay.
But until we have wood that we can place instantly, no delay should be in place for stone

 

I was thinking exactly this.

 

i agree with neat and verdant, we should wait for build nerfs until AFTER the new add-ins and (im assuming) cost changes. if the developers are looking to eliminate doors being 30 ft up i'd suggest doing some testing with decreased safe fall height.

i think the 2 different types of buildings would in itself help balance, any wood structures would be a strictly short term investment since they can be destroyed by knights (and probably fairly easily). stone structures, being more expensive, would require more work and resources from builders, it would also require teamwork in order to hold partially built buildings. this will place a greater value on stone and stone buildings while letting wood take the place of stone as a cheap and fragile tower resource. this will also help knights deal with the "no goal" problem, if they get to the front they'll have wooden towers to try and break into.

i fully support sapping. it existed and made a lot of sense. entombing on the other hand did not. you could attempt to cover your back with a wood structure but stone is expensive and hard to get. i suggest stone blocks drop less stone than regular stone (or the same amount as currently but with the same cost to place stone). with this entombing will be short term (if used at all). an air system would make it even more dangerous to sap an enemies defenses on your own

 

Yeah Chiniz has it right with "-Stuff write here == Pro ++ Cons". I understand that "++" is a poor choice for someone against something, but oh well :p

From what I read/inferred from Geti's post, I imagine one general direction change for KAG:

• Focus combat into the X-axis (left to right) and away from the Y-axis (up and down).

Now that seems pretty broad, and maybe not even that different from current KAG, but consider it with these additional factors:

• Increased fall damage after a lower height
• Lower bombjump height gain
• Knight combat refinement
• Archer "spam" nerf
• Builder block-placement nerf
• Removal of vertical team-only travel
• Stronger doors

All of these combine to focus the combat into the X-axis. Keeping your "boots on the ground" so to speak.

I personally would love to see all of these as I think the last 4 would encourage more interesting castles, and the first 3 would decrease the mobility and randomness of the Knight.

 

Sorry to quote the whole thing but maybe Contrary, Acavado or Wyeth can edit this into the OP with a note? Been skimming this thread and while there are a lot of good ideas its hella hard to read through it all.

 

an idea that might work is a barracks that you could create at a siege workshops these barracks would create people that have 1 heart and are walking meat shields in response to an overload of archers on their team and a shortage of knights on my team. they would also attack they enemy

 

So, after Zefree's post I think I'm ready to make a post.

The only problem with fast building I have it's the fact that in a first rush when a knight runs towards me I can place some quick wall and he cannot reach me. Actually, I can do it whenever a knight runs toward me.
No matter how good is the knight, I can do it. Newbie builder cannot stop any knight like this because his lack of experience makes him unable to place blocks quickly.
On the other hand, experienced builder can stop both newbie and pro knight this way. This is stupid.
So whole that problem is a fact that builders gain skill slower but when they are skilled, they are usually more useful and better than skilled knights (I'm not talking about archers because archers in close combat are completely different story).
So, my suggestion: instead of slowing block's placing time, give some sprint or whatever to knight to make him more usable versus builders who are high on materials.

Of course everything I typed can be a bullshit but I don't give a fuck .

Edit: and battering rams are always a good solution.
</br>--- merged: Feb 26, 2012 11:42 AM ---</br>
testing, testing for shad

 

I think when they release battering rams, then spike pits will be very popular. Even if you remove teambridges you could still make the Pits wide enough that you can't jump over them while carrying a siege weapon but still manageable without. (Knight gliding etc.) Or just make a Pit 3 blocks wide in front of the wall, so that battering rams can't reach it.

And I don't think battering rams will be very usefull, since you need to take them to the front. Few archers that spam arrows, bombs raining down and knight drops and the battering ram is gone. Giving protection to a good builder that builds a vaulting ladder made of stone at the enemy wall would be more usefull :/

A better solution would be a ballista that shoots giant arrows that destroy stone blocks and stick inside the wall and are climbable for knights. That way you can storm a castle easier and no builder needs to be at the front. Make it so that knights can buy ballista arrows with money. Then the knights have no need for a builder at the front anymore, since only a few knights like to change class and be a builder.

Everytime I play knight I charge with my fellow comrades to the front only to be stuck because we have no offensive builder and it seems I'm the only one on most servers that does something about it and changes back to builder, even if I would like to play a knight for exchange. I've read every post on this thread now and I start to get the feeling, that knights want to be the supreme force on the battlefield that can storm anything by themself without the help of archers and builders.

About fastbuilding:

Fastbuilding is similar to knight combat and bombjumping. Only a few master it but then it's deadly. Not many builders use the full speed potential of building. Most of them jump on a block and build-jump their way up, while spending about 1 sec between each stone block. I've only seen a few builders that were really amazing with their ability to raise a building out of nothing in only a few seconds. I like that builders have a "skill" too that has a steep learning curve like bombjumping does.

 

Leave the pre-match build time, but make building blocks take some time. The reason being, on smaller maps, if it takes builders a certain amount of time to get a wall up, it's going to be impossible for either team to establish any sort of solid structure. You'll have knights running in, wiping a few enemies, getting taken out by archers, and then the builders that come in behind reversing any progress that was made on constructing fortifications. Also, if you end up with bad or new builders in a match, and they end up not being able to get something up fast enough, especially in a CTF game, you're going to be overrun and scored on extremely fast...

And although I do believe that builders need to be nerfed slightly...

I still think it's utterly ridiculous that people are claiming that structures can become overpowered. It's not that they are overpowered, it's just that the other team might have better builders than you. Both teams have the exact same materials available to them during their build time. If we're going to complain about archers being OP within towers because "omg the nites can't reach them", then why do you think we have builders? Why don't you counter with your own archers? If you can get some knights to escort a builder or two up to whatever fortification you need to get past, and have archers providing suppressing fire, you should be able to either cause some moderate damage to their tower, or get a ladder at least up to a door to have a chance at breaking through. Knights aren't supposed to be effective against archers at long range, and archers aren't supposed to be effective against knights, or even builders for that matter at close range. I don't understand how you can call this "unbalanced" when each one counters each other Rock-Paper-Scissors-style in different situations. The archers stay at range because they hardly stand a chance otherwise, that's how they are designed. Here, I'll make this simple:

Archer in tower? Countermoves: Use your own archers against them, make a catapult and archers suppress to protect it, builders attack the tower with knight assistance, builders create ladders with knight assistance, TUNNEL (which is another aspect I feel like we're ignoring completely before we call the current state of building "unbalanced")

But you see, arguably, is true. I will agree with you, that end-game can be quite boring when it comes to the team with the least tickets camping out. The only thing that would need to be done to counter this is start up a 1-2 minute timer once a team reaches 0 tickets. This would give the losing team some incentive to leave the base and make one last attempt at winning, because they know if they don't lose from losing all their tickets, they'll lose from running out of time.

Why? A large portion of this game is being able to organize and work together well enough to penetrate the enemy defenses. You're arguing that they are boring because it takes "too much effort" to make it through buildings, right? Well, that's why the games are long. This is why you have so much time to figure out what works and what doesn't getting through the enemy barricades. If one tactic doesn't work, then try another, you've got plenty of time.

They way you're putting your argument makes it seem like you want the games to be shorter, which is exactly what all of what you proposed would do. We'd be playing much shorter games that would be much less involved, giving you less time to explore tactical options and making games feel a lot more rushed because you want to do something before the timer runs out.

 

It's also even more invalid for you to rebel the idea that the defensive side does have something to defend themselves with. Like I said before, if you really wanted things to be fair, you might as well play a game that disallows players to build structures and make wise choices that will put them in advantages. Also, it's not that hard for the offensive archer to hide in a temporary battle quarter to counter the fortified archers. However, the real problem is not balance but rather builders who think all they should do is stick in their team's base instead of playing more offensively to build those battle structures.

Also I believe KAG developers aren't that quick to make nerfing decisions. The concept of nerf doesn't even seem viable at this point judging by future available content such as SIEGE TOWERS. More or so, I agree with what NEAT also said, archers tend to be powerful at range and vulnerable at close combat, especially when the knight has bombs. In terms of the team field of KAG, the only problem is people making bad decisions and team mates being too rambo in the battlefield or too conservative of their supplies.

I agree with you to a fivefold, people are just aggravated only because there is a large variety of options that will lead one's team to victory and that some are better than others. It's apparent that people can't seem to accept that there is "a better" strategy in most games such as KAG.

 

This. Building also needs to have a high skill cap so the committed have something to strive for. That said, I like the idea of speed building with wood and making stone a slower to place. Seems natural; also it might make people think, hopefully, more carefully about the construction (not just a solid mass of stone).

As a slow builder, I am always impressed by the building speed of some of you lot

 

Like someone mentioned before, if you weaken buildings and nerf builders games would get a lot shorter and less tactical.

It would be sad if games would end in an endless knightslaughterfest instead of being a teamgame where builders with good construction and planing skill are as important as fighting knights at the front.

I understand why people that love to play knight get frustrated because they can't do anything against a good building WITHOUT the help of an offensive builder. But that's part of the game If you can't advance for yourself then change class to builder and help the other knights out. But not a lot of people want to do that, they want to have maybe 1-2 rounds of fast fun as a knight and slaughter as much people as possible like it is some kind of FPS deathmatch shooter.

What appeals the most on me in this game is the extreme team aspect. As builder in the building phase you start to construct a tower and many other builders start helping you without a clue what you want to do and most of the time, the most extraordinary and amazing structures emerge of that kind of organisation. As knights you storm the front while making ladders with your shield so that other knights can jump over defenses and protect builders so that they can make ladders, give protection for an archer so that he can snipe the camping archers in a building etc.

Removing the teamaspect and reducing the game to" knights of king arthurs slaughterfest for gold" would be a bad decision in my opinion. Many people would think the knightslaughterfests would be fun for some time but it would get very boring after some time. This game is unique with its Rock Paper Scissor system and it should be kept that way We have already enough deathmatch slaughter games like teamfortress 2 or other FPS or Sidescrollers so let this game be special with the building and team aspects and enjoy it or play something else!