Wall Running Experiments

I find builders strangely more capable than an archer... I must really not care for the grapple, and the still incredible prevalence of the multi shot.
Even if their walls are useless, they can still counter-mine, and build really annoying production lines... they seem to only be capable at very offensive/rush building.

Also, going back to whatever I failed to say... Even if you have a more reliable wall run ability, does it completely prevent the possibility of a knight doing the wall-humping-shield-glide thing that makes the climb up walls infinitely.

 

I am really excited for this. Finally my fingers wont hurt getting over walls :D

 

I like the work being done on the new and improved wallrunning, but I can't help agreeing with the guys who are saying that buildings are becoming more and more useless with each passing update.
Back in Alpha, taking down a tower was a real accomplishment, and the resulting collapse was epic and satisfying. In Beta, we see changes to Builder that make it harder to build large, effective defenses, (lack of notch-climbing and teambridges, annoying block placement, etc.) a problem which is only compounded by other classes' incredible ability to either rip them apart (mostly Knights in this case) or completely circumvent them (Knights AND Archers). When you take down a tower now, which is a rare occurrence in and of itself, the tower is hardly ever a giant, spike-covered sky-piercing (colored-lantern-filled) monster that struck fear into even the best bombjumpers, but a small, insignificant base whose only purpose is to house a few more factories and set the spawn point further up on the battlefront.

Building used to be an honorable profession. Strathos was a shining example of this in Alpha; he was a shirtless, squishy little Builder, yeah - but he was a feared and respected shirtless, squishy little Builder. When he got on top of his towers and prepared to drop blocks on you, you knew you'd damn well better be careful.

Builders are kind of an afterthought now. They die far too easily, are really awful at defending themselves, and their only strength, building, has become very easily beatable. If somebody asks you what class you like best, you're considered an oddity for saying Builder, and that's kind of... wrong. In a game with three classes, every single one ought to be fun to play, and with all the recent attention to Archers, (not that I don't love Archers (I usually only Archer if you didn't know)) Builders are kinda getting the short end of the stick.

 

It ends up that Archers become the bane of construction, because of their ability to get anywhere.

I still don't like the feel of the new stick that the archers got... as far as tropes of, I think they are now "Demon Spider".

 

I agree with you with all points stated but I think builders strengths might show up in the oncoming CTF mode seeing how it would change gameplay massively, TTH seems like a quick push mode which is also hard for builders to be at any use most of the time as there is not enough time to build because capturing halls means closer spawn for enemy team and that also means countless waves and also the fact that builder is so squishy now makes him useless in TTH.

 

I suppose it's not the fact that they are so squishy, it's just that no where is safe for them anymore.

 

hmm there appears to be some recent issuses with what i believe to be the master server? all servers apear to be giving off big lag spikes to everyone. it starts and keeps goin on for like... 3o minutes max and then stops for like an hour or two. it then starts up again. just noticed it today. not sure if its a massive problem or im just over reacting

 

Lol builders in classic are op as fuck. Do you want untouchable shitlords who have the ability to stall the game for hours to be back?

 

There's a fine balance between classic's entombing, ladder spamming, infinite resource builders and beta's awkward-to-use, glass builders that don't stand a chance on the front lines even with escorts. It's really easy to single out a builder in a crowd of knights jumping all over the place because you just have to look for the player that can't move like a UFO (not saying I have a problem with knight movement).

 

This is actually true and in fact, builders are still extremely powerful just that their strength has always been very subtle. Even something as extremely trivial as going to a flat plain where a lot of battles happen and adding a layer of wood so that your team engages on a layer of high ground. This seems so minor yet every good knight knows how valuable even one tile of height advantage is an engagement. For 10 seconds work and a handful of wood a builder can give their team a critical edge in that location for the rest of the game, potentially dozens of fights to come. Even if that edge only comes out to an average of one knight taking 1 heart less damage per confrontation (a modest estimate) that's still up to 12 hearts of damage avoidance for 10 seconds work. This is only one basically trivial example of what builders can do, staple stuff like walling up halls or bridging gaps can change in the ide of battle, just in ways that aren't as obvious as a knight flying around slashing people or an archer... Well archers never do anything but the knight example still works.

Anyways that said builder is not weak, but it would not necessarily be harmful to the game to make them a little stronger, so long as its in the right ways.

 

A builder can be strong or weak depending on the situation. Such is the case for even archers. The question is, "Are the strengths reliable enough to make the class worth my time?" I would argue that your example doesn't really give you a reliable advantage. The slightly raised platform could easily be turned against the team that built it, making sensible people think twice before constructing it. The problem right now is that I'm not even sure I'm helping my team as a builder anymore after the build timer ends. Or if I am helping my team it's not very exciting (ex: minecrafting).

 

Wow. Even betaphiles realized that the game goes in the wrong direction.

 

uhhh, its moving in the good direction which is "as far from that balance pile of shit known as classic as possible"
you cant expect a multiplayer game to always have perfect balance/playability/whatever because they never have. i think this one is pretty ok given its developed by 2 people

 

Balance is an asymptote. You can try to get close but you will never reach it.

 

It's a strange, strange direction towards balance, but at the same time everything becomes easier to attack, and less safe.

 

Фдыщ

Next stage - notch climbing?

Also, what wrong in help of builder with ladder? I thought that it's a team game.

 

Devs try to make classes bit more independent because back in Classic not having a builder up front caused massive amount of failures, being stuck in a hole and waiting for builder to make ladder for you was a bit painful and stalled action a lot, it did however had some advantages for enemy team that could use it with good purpose.

Although the problem now is that builder became really squishy and going up to front means certain death as the survival ability is really low in beta, you are instantly such an easy target to pick off, builder needs bit more offensive ability to be able to be out there to at least help your team move onward faster so in this case making builder more agile might help to dodge attacks from knights, the only problem now is archers who can pick you off very easily.

 

Fuck I'm happy I wasn't the only one that hated climbing these shit but effective towers all the time, so tedious.