WAR Mode, Full KAG and the fairly immediate future

I assume that means all weird directionality based fuck ups like squeezing, one directional traps and all that are also fixed?

 

Wait build up your army? This Will have migrants?

 

I've used the search-function but couldn't find anything from the Devs about how farming is implemented.

What are we talking about exactly? Is the term "farming" meant as in actually farming crops/wheat (planting/building and cropping it once it's fully grown similar to how we can already slice grass right now?) Or farming as in tediously chopping wood to sell it and get new stuff?

Is the farming only necessary in the beginning stages or does someone need to stay behind to keep farming and the economy going?


I definitely like the fresh idea but I'm sceptical about how balanced this new war mode will be. You know what I'm talking about, if in current builds you happen to join a team where half of the people swap to knights and archers during the starting phase instead of doing anything useful at all you've almost lost already...
If the economy makes or breaks you at the start in war mode then by the time one faction gets to the middle and is able to claim and secure it, it would probably be very hard or prohibitively costly to take it back. One way around it could be to increase the spawning time for the "superior" team though, balancing things out a bit more and make it interesting and more challenging for both - but now I'm just rambling.

Very excited for the new stuff.
Torch them enemies!

 

This problem is present in every team-oriented game I have ever encountered and even in the KAG of today. For a team game with an objective to work, you invariably encounter the issue of needing everyone on the same page with regard to the logistics and compositions that translate to victory. This is simply due to how there will always be a right way and a dumb way to do anything.

Sometimes the problem has high visibility such as in the smaller teams of MOBAs, or when you dont have a medic in tf2, othertimes youve got big messy kagfights where the lack of a competent frontline builder is discreetly costing you ground but the builders need to be nudged about it because theyre distracted with whatever it is theyre working on at home and everything is constantly exploding and ohnoes too late theyve got a cata, haaalp.
We hope to have awareness but no one is omniscient, right?

Anyway. My point is that this is far from a new issue. As a team game ages, a paradigm becomes more generally understood. It becomes learned by observation and much unfortunate shouting of 'L2P NOOB' and you just naturally end up with broadly accepted ideas like 'solo mid and a jungler', 'there should be at least one medic', and 'it would be rad if we werent all archers so someone could actually capture ground.'

When LoL introduced dominion, people generally didnt know what they were doing. there were no roles and points went completely undefended. When Tf2 released MVM there were useless teams and money was neglected. When KAG releases war, there simply -will- be a period of cluelessness, and I would argue that the team which doesnt play the game intelligently by worrying about team composition right from the start in a team-based game does actually deserve to lose just as much as the individual knight who tries to solo the entire enemy base deserves to be swatted down, assuming you want the game to be decided by competence more than artificial neutralizing mechanics. Its part of the game. Its essential to the idea of having a competitive goal at all.

 

You are right of course.
Maybe I'm worrying too much about the free game though, since this will be predominantly premium content I would at least expect a little more competence. It's just that I've been playing a few rounds on the public "Mainserver" lately and I'm just constantly at a loss of words.

You'll see people building one brick thick stonewalls without any doors into the sky and in the 4-5 games I played there during the last days I can't remember a single instance where someone wasn't griefing. And sometimes you're not even sure if they are real griefers if you know what I mean...



Point is, with economy in the picture any inefficencies are compunded exponentially the longer the game goes on. A team with more competent builders in the current startup phase is at a huge advantage already. And the new economy system is basically like a longer, drawn-out startup phase... and the longer the startup, the more advantage the faster team has. So by the time the actual fighting starts in the middle, the game may as well be long lost for the slower team.

So ironing things out with slower tickets for the better team may prove to be a good idea - just an option to keep in mind is all I'm saying. Because I can see me getting frustrated and eventually quitting as soon as I realize that the other team has a huge advantage because my teammates are 8 years old and wear underwear on their head. If there's a slight balancing mechaning however I can see myself getting motivated to carry on for two players... and I sometimes experience that when I'm in the stronger team I also get a bit frustrated. Don't get me wrong it's huge fun to ground the other team into dust but there's a thing as too easy so a balancing meachanic could fix that too.

I'm not saying it should be a ridiculous balance that makes it almost impossible to win those games, just a little nudge for the better team to go the extra mile and a chance for the slower team to catch up even in mid-game.

 

I sympathize. Ive never seen an ideal solution to the common issue of having a team full of senseless baboons. Choice of community is about the best ive noticed.. For example, there is a whitelisted server here in KAG for the snobby UH. I MEAN. COMPETENT. <3<3.. They vote on membership. For the rest of us, the gold MOLE server reacts viciously to griefing and must suffice.
Beyond that I guess we just do our best and try to enjoy our personal role in the grand machine of teamplay. Talent is definately not a prerequisite for premium accounts though. Wouldnt count on that.

As to the rest, we're on tricksy theoretical ground but I understand your concern. We wont have a clue about the balance til we see for ourselves. At the moment we cant define precisely what the economic advantage is, in total. We're astronomers without so much as a telescope making guesses about how the space-squids that might live in some other galaxy manage to keep themselves moist (and more importantly, will they make for delicious space-sushi?)
I will offer that advantages are easily lost if you cant capitalize on them where it really counts.. For example, on some servers they have precious gold to mine under the major point of contest, which is needed to build catapults which give a massive advantage toward siegeing the rest of the enemy territory.. So there is already an economic element there, Yet it is tragically not uncommon that it isnt utilized.. or worse, the catapult gets stolen by the enemy. Ive also seen the winning team smash themselves into defeat against a losing team who simply had too much advantage from their nice home fortifications. I'll also offer that a good swordsman on a losing team stabs no weaker than one on the winning side. He would be disadvantaged in other areas, certainly, but not Utterly.
Hmm. So yeah; In response to your concern that things will snowball from the start, I say that your team does still need to be competent all the way through even if competence is only a measure of how many clueless players you were able to compensate for.
However, we can certainly agree that respawn timers have proven elsewhere to be a useful knob to adjust for finer balance in games, and that one-sided victories are lame for both teams, and that having a chance for your team to shape up and swing things back is important. Highfive.
.. ... mmm.. space-sushi.. :D

Dont succumb to hopelessness, sir. Sharpen your own blade and know that you arent alone.

 

"So ironing things out with slower tickets for the better team may prove to be a good idea"

I think KAG needs announcer so it will say how many re-spawns left and all that.


"I've never seen an ideal solution to the common issue of having a team full of senseless baboons"

Try throwing bananas at them, but yeah it's a common issue and something has to be done about people overall who think they are "pro" "1337 skillz" and all this shit, it's annoying to think how people see this need of skill to feel better about themselves, I'm sorry to make you sad now but KAG does not require skill, just logical mind. I walk up to builder once, ask him if I could use his catapult for one shot then he tells me to fuck off - Rant.

 

Unfortunately with more complexity, and more importantly interdependency, in team games there is alot more potential for the other team to dominate if they are fulfilling their roles properly, in most team games a skilled team will beat a team of skilled individuals. But handicapping a team that does well playing together devalues teamwork, if you can pull back a game while still having sloppy teamplay, and a few skilled players making an impact based on alot of drawbacks for the previously successful team. That solution is a pretty half arsed way of balancing a game like this, and is only really a fun mechanic in really stupid arcadey games which you shouldn't care about winning too much cos you don't even put much thought into it in the first place.

I think the TF2 method of scrambling teams works pretty effectively to counter that, however that's in a setting where a round lasts anything from 5-15 minutes, god knows how long a game of war mode might last. However the other method of putting off unhelpful dickwads comes into play in games like arma and the like, where the game is so unforgiving and painful to play iof you don;t play as a team, people that don't have an inclination to do so will fuck off very soon and never play again, but given that war mode will probably be much more forgiving and beginner/useless prick that want to play by themselves friendly. In team games where one is dominating there's generally some way of slowing the game down and grinding an advantage your way somehow until you can get things more even, there's very few games where you can get steamrolled without the teams been hideously unbalanced, and in those cases a team scramble is a good bet since the last round only lasted 5 minutes anyway.

 

Yeah. Arrogance causes as many problems as incompetence. Teams can break themselves by hating eachother as much as by failing to accomplish any goals. Theres such a thing as sucking, but being a twat at someone over it is only ever detrimental. We're probably better off leaving the prideful gorilla chest-pounding in the past. An evolved person solves his dissatisfaction over tea, with scathing veiled remarks and highly expressive rubs of his monocle. Wot wot.

So we all seem to agree that there should be room for a clear winner but also opportunity for the losing team to come back from economic disadvantage (which seems to have been C-K's main concern). Seems no one wants the economy to singlehandedly decide the game without a chance for the opponent to interact, and no one would want heavy-handed uses of uninteractive elements like harsh respawn timers taking control away either. All of our thoughts could be put to rest with more understanding of exactly what the economy will determine about the war as a whole, and how it can be interacted with. So what do we know.. hmm.
So far.. It seems it will determine the total respawns available (As Geti mentions in the first post, "farming for food -> spawns"), it will determine the tools available to you (via funding research), It seems it will be used to pay for bombs and suchlike (because remember: Enemies no longer magically bleed coins when killed, the money must come from somewhere), and it seems the better resources of the middle island give an advantage if you can hold it. Is there anything to say about how to capture the advantage-island that the enemy is paradoxically using to hold on to their advantage-island? Thats where C-K's respawn delay was targetted.
I spoke about the ability to fumble your advantage in my prior post, but what else is there? Anyone??

 

I personally quite like the challenge of joining a losing team to try help out, it's amazing how much 1 semi-competent builder can effect the flow of combat, if you correct a few glaring mistakes here and there suddenly you aren't been pummelled any more in many situations.

I did realise that he didn't mean for any handicap to be obvious, I'd just rather hoped that there would be enough variety in tactics, and a decent enough structure in gameplay, for a team to hold their own if they get organised and try claw things back. CoH is a good example of that, forget some of the horrible balance issues that are in the game and there's alot you can do as a losing team to even things up, have a shit load of tanks coming at you and you have only a handful of units? Get some tank traps down mine a few key areas and be ready to ambush, doesn't take alot of resources but it does take alot of thought and micromangement to pull off, especially on 3vs3 or 4vs4 game when an entire team is suffering, plenty of occasions I've seen near impossible comebacks happen due to peoples persistence and resourcefulness.

 

There's so much to read, and I only want to read what Geti and the KAG team say in case they say more kool kat stuff i.e, features! (No offense to the long-worded people, I'm just too lazy to read for ten minutes on the internet.)

 

:(:(:(
But I had my hopes pinned on learning what TheCrusader thought.

 

Obviously too lazy to look for a purple name too ;)

 

Would be nice to add in some mechanical stuff.. like the better than wolves mod in minecraft...

 

Are we getting those ropes/pulleys in this update? Or the windmill/arrow slits? Or are some (or all) not coming?

 

Do you mean Shadlington?

As soon as this update is out I want three things from our community.

1. Being able to burn people strapped to stakes.
2. Being able to increase wind in game quickly, changing kites into paragliders.
3. Being able to attach kites to migrants and zombies.

To stop whining about balanced teams and crap, that can be easily solved if the KAG Team made it easy for us to make tutorials for the community. Or they made more tutorials themselves.

 

I feel like making a tutorial... but in a website. :P
Im not sure when ill do it... but it should be pretty soon. o wo

 

Tutorials only work if people watch them.