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[Taricus]

Yeah, you have to be closer, but I kinda happen to be a close quarters archer. Most important thing for archers right now is the grappling hook. You need to use it to run away from knights in case the need arises. A good archer can't camp and snipe anymore, you do have to be mobile to be effective.

[Flying Dice]

It was always like that, though, just... with useful range. If you stood still you've get countersniped instantly.


And, again, if you're going to be in close, why bother playing anything but knight? Apart from there not being any servers that you can get good ping on, of course. I can't even knight any more because I can't find a place to play with below 200ms, and I'm flat out not good enough to into timing for knight combat with lag.


I'm also like 90% sure they nerfed catapult range as well.

[Sonlirain]

Honestly? i tried playing today and... the game basically is now Knights Arthurs Knights.
Whatever you build as a builder the knight will just fly over by bomb jumping. Archers are a laugh and stone doors give in after a single bomb (at least the horizontal one). Building a base has almost no purpouse now beyond mild annoyment and the only wall design worth a damn i saw was a giant wooden skyscraper reinforced with stone at the base. Everything else is wrecked almost instantly by bomb spam or ignored because all knoghts just bombjump over it or wreck it with bombs/kegs.

[Reudh]

Honestly? i tried playing today and... the game basically is now Knights Arthurs Knights.
Whatever you build as a builder the knight will just fly over by bomb jumping. Archers are a laugh and stone doors give in after a single bomb (at least the horizontal one). Building a base has almost no purpouse now beyond mild annoyment and the only wall design worth a damn i saw was a giant wooden skyscraper reinforced with stone at the base. Everything else is wrecked almost instantly by bomb spam or ignored because all knoghts just bombjump over it or wreck it with bombs/kegs.

It's meant to be that way?

Considering in classic you often had games that went for hours or days because neither team was able to advance, so they implemented tickets / timers, which resulted in camping in the case of tickets. I much rather the buildings being weak, because then the defense relies on your team rather than the amount of builders you have minecrafting.

You also have many many options available to you as other classes. A builder can drop spikes on people to injure them, or throw a boulder on them to squash them instantly. A well built tower has a setup that blocks bombjumps anyway.

Archers aren't a laugh, lol. Have you ever seen Trumbles or any of the other archer mains in action? Slippery little bastards you can never hit while they fill you full of holes.

Stone doors will not die to a simple bomb unless it is open. Stone doors will die to kegs, of course, but you can knock kegs off people's backs and nab them for yourself.

[Nighthawk]

Honestly? i tried playing today and... the game basically is now Knights Arthurs Knights.
Whatever you build as a builder the knight will just fly over by bomb jumping. Archers are a laugh and stone doors give in after a single bomb (at least the horizontal one). Building a base has almost no purpouse now beyond mild annoyment and the only wall design worth a damn i saw was a giant wooden skyscraper reinforced with stone at the base. Everything else is wrecked almost instantly by bomb spam or ignored because all knoghts just bombjump over it or wreck it with bombs/kegs.

Knights are pretty much amazing at everything once you haul yourself over the difficulty curve (which basically involves learning to bombjump). Archers can actually be pretty terrifying, too, but it takes far, far more work to get to the point where you're considered any kind of threat, and even then you'll be risking life and limb every time you get in close to do some decent damage.

Archers aren't about damage as much as they are about psychological warfare; their job is to make enemy Knights afraid of dropping their shields lest they take a volley of arrows to the face, forcing them to play defensively and enabling your Knights to push forward.
They're also very good at breaking buildings and siege engines, for what it's worth.

Builders kind of have the short end of the stick, but a good Builder can still be a huge contribution to the team. It's all about timing - knowing when to charge the enemy base and bury yourself in their tower and when to drop that boulder or those spikes on your opponents' heads.

[Flying Dice]

Archers aren't about damage as much as they are about psychological warfare; their job is to make enemy Knights afraid of dropping their shields lest they take a volley of arrows to the face, forcing them to play defensively and enabling your Knights to push forward.
They're also very good at breaking buildings and siege engines, for what it's worth.

This is actually an excellent illustration of how shitty they are now.

As an archer, instead of actually killing things, your role if you're really good is to be a high-risk annoyance who might make things a bit easier for your own knights.

And I have yet to see anyone bother with the elaborate defenses from archers that used to go up, for the simple reason that no archer is going to get close enough to abuse your defenses unless they've already been swarmed by knights. Nobody's building sky towers to keep their catapults out of reach, or platform-walls to block arrows on flatter trajectories.

[miauw62]

Yeah, I remember the huge stalemates back in the day, when there were 64 people total on a server, 10 of which were royal guard, and just huge impenetrable stone fortresses with a deadly no-mans-land inbetween. Which was pretty great
There's apparently still a single EU classic server going strong, which was pretty fun. I almost always play builder, and the game is pretty unbalanced I guess, but apart from tunnelling (which just ruins the game for everyone), all of it is still fun.

I could try to set up my own server if you dudes want me to. I currently don't have the required SSH keys so I have to find a screen somewhere to regain access, but it's probably not that hard.

[Sonlirain]

I played only for a bit after a long hiatus but compared to how things used to be the current gameplay is just... bad.

Siege engines lost most of their purpouse because knights do everything they do and do it better. Things like the balista were stalemate breakers and availble only if the builders collected enough gold and could almost single handedly turn a stalemate into a curbstomp. Now however there are no stalemates to break because games end in 10 minutes.

Mining gold and building  structures lost most purpouse aside of maybe making the initial workshops and basic walls around them. After that its just making a giant tower (wooden because there is not enough stone availble to make it thick enough so it won't topple from one powder keg) all they way to the skybox so kights can't just jump over it.

So basically:

What i remember - Chaotic siege warfare where any serious push needs at least one builder to hep scale the walls (by building trap doors or ladders) and destroy traps/walls in a timely manner.
What i see now - Knights bombjumping everywhere completely ignoring any defense you build unless it's a skyscraper at least 5 titles wide.

The game literally devolved into a primitive 2D melee deathmatch by putting all the unique features on the back burner.

[Taricus]

A wooden tower is FAR more vulnerable given that one archer with a fire arrow can burn the entire thing down. And there tends to be plenty of stone for a proper set of fortifications. Knight curbstomps only tend to happen when you have bad buildings that are easily scaled by them (Or easily destroyed, such as wooden walls.)

[Sonlirain]

From what i saw fire can be put out even by knights (that or the fire arrows have a chance of failing) also istone walls fall so easy that mining stone seems to be almost a waste of time because building a tower that's both thick enough (kegs and bombs) and tall enough (bombjumps) is so prohibitively expensive and time consuming it's just not worth it.

So most relatively effective towers i saw were wooden expendable towers jsut made tall enough to keep bombjumpers out for a few minutes before one smartass comes along with a keg and blows the entire thing to bits.

[Sergarr]

I remember I've had some fun with a knight playing suicide bomber. Did they nerf that too?

[Sonlirain]

I remember I've had some fun with a knight playing suicide bomber. Did they nerf that too?

Nope running up to a wall with a geg is as effective as ever. Probably more considering the game became pretty knight centric.

[Nighthawk]

From what i saw fire can be put out even by knights (that or the fire arrows have a chance of failing) also istone walls fall so easy that mining stone seems to be almost a waste of time because building a tower that's both thick enough (kegs and bombs) and tall enough (bombjumps) is so prohibitively expensive and time consuming it's just not worth it.

Kegs blow straight through a certain number of tiles (5 or so?) from the epicenter of the explosion, both horizontally and vertically. The best way to create an efficient defense is to make a tall frontal line of stone (to prevent bombjumping and fire arrows), fill in the next layer or two with wooden blocks, then leave some space and make another thin stone tower, beginning the process again.

If you put enough space between the stone spires, any keg used will take out nothing but a few stone blocks and a bunch of cheap wood. And if you put a high backwall tying the first tower to the second, even if the first tower gets kegged, it won't fall immediately, enabling it to be reclaimed and repaired.

And if you're worried about the wood layers getting burned, you can use a bit more stone to checker the design, alternating stone and wood so any fire arrow used will only burn one wood block.

tl;dr - Smart design is far more efficient and effective than piling up a bunch of stone or wood in front of your base.

... That said, the reason defenses are so easily overwhelmed was actually kind of a design choice; people expressed annoyance at stalemates, so the devs decided to make the game quicker and more easily won.

[Sonlirain]

Except they should make siege weapons (you know balistas and catapults) more accesible rather than turning knights into batman.

[Nighthawk]

Right now I see the mobility of the classes as the main problem. KAG Alpha was slower-paced - literally - everyone moved slower and didn't jump as high. The root of every annoying thing currently in the game is mobility of the classes - particularly Knights and Archers.

Siege engines get overtaken too easily because players move too fast.
Defenses are vaulted too easily because players jump higher and can go right over them using bombjumping and grappling hooks.
Archers are seemingly underpowered because Knights can move so quickly, even while shielding, and can pull off a slash in a second.
Knights are annoyed with Archers because they can use their grappling hooks to move even faster.
The value of defenses is cheapened because they get built so quickly and destroyed so easily, making Builders unsatisfied.

Again, the devs did this stuff on purpose to make the game faster... but not everyone is a fan, myself included, to some extent anyway.