Spiral Knights - Thoughts on AT currently?

Thoughts on AT currently?

18 replies [Last post]

Mon, 08/31/2015 - 15:38

Kneeanderthal

I know in the past people have been all against AT, and very strongly so. So much so, that the Anti-AT tournament gained significant popularity, and lasted for a good amount of time.

Now that LD is essentially dead (100 people total who play is nothing), I wanted to ask the remnants of what used to be an enjoyable minigame a few questions about your opinion:

1) Do you think LD would be better with AT completely removed from it?
2) Do you think LD can ever become as popular as it used to be in 2012/2013?
3) Do you have fun when you play a game of LD?
4) Why do you think OOO has kept AT in LD, despite extremely strong support or its removal? Do they lack the capability to do it, or are they just unwilling, or a different reason?

Just an opinion survey, for whoever feels like answering.

Mon, 08/31/2015 - 15:42

Salt-Shaker

1 Yes 2 Maybe if they are

1 Yes
2 Maybe if they are able to bring players back to the game since most have quit.
3 No anymore
4 Not sure what thing it was in but Nick said that it wasn't that easy to just remove at

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 00:06

Erlandr

1. yes 2. Hell no, that ship

1. yes
2. Hell no, that ship has sailed my friend
3. Yeah during primetime GMT+8
4. I think their coders don't understand how to do it.

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 02:13

Dutch-Oven

1 - Yes 2 - No. If you leave

1 - Yes
2 - No. If you leave a game unchanged for 3 years the player base is going to dry up. OOO can change this but I doubt they even know what to do with LD to make it successful again.
3 - Yes, LD is still fun. There are still good players and newer players with skills comparable to the old players. The player base is just smaller.
4 - OOO have never given us anything like a design manifesto for Lockdown. I couldn't say. There was a brief moment where AT was disabled and I really enjoyed that, but apparently that was a "bug"...

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 03:29

Krakob

So long as OOO continue to neglect LD and make design decisions based around PvE instead of both PvE and Lockdown or having separate stats for PvE and LD, the game will continue to gradually become less and less balanced while the playerbase shrinks just like the rest of the game's population.

It's a real shame, because LD is in essence an amazingly fun and potent game, perhaps even as an eSport. But it's not the core of SK and has an incredibly high entry barrier while the devs haven't improved the game in years, so it's just not gonna go anywhere.

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 03:37

Skeptics

1. Yes, simply because of the

1. Yes, simply because of the community itself harassing each other.
2. ...
3. To kill time I guess. I like playing LD, but I think everyone agrees it can be so much better.
4. I mean it's there to use if you want it. Not like anyone's forcing you to play with it, though they'll pretty much harass you to play without it. I don't think OOO considers raging tryhards that interesting

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 10:22

Holy-Nightmare

...........The long answer

1) Do you think LD would be better with AT completely removed from it?

For most of the people with good connection and no lag it would be about the same as it is now. For the players with lag it would be a step down since AT keeps them from aiming at targets that aren't there.

2) Do you think LD can ever become as popular as it used to be in 2012/2013?

As it currently is no, in order to do so LD and SK in general need to step up their advertising. They also need to treat LD as a totally separate game with items changing to be balanced in LD. To promote fairness certain features should be restricted and maps altered to make spawncamping more difficult.

3) Do you have fun when you play a game of LD?

Not as much as I used to in fact it just gets boring. Join que; half my team is AFK/low rank/leave before round starts; The other team full of high ranking BK/Chaos/Skolver/Snarby/Shadowsun.
http://loldailyfun.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/my-team.jpg

WAAAAY back in the day I would play in T2 and practically no one had trinkets or the CR to spend on UVs. Now with the addition of new armors and buffs to some items, not to mention the increased easy with which players can farm CR means that more and more fights often end in a few seconds if you don't have trinkets or UVs.

4) Why do you think OOO has kept AT in LD, despite extremely strong support of its removal? Do they lack the capability to do it, or are they just unwilling, or a different reason?

OOO has been quite busy developing their recently released mobile game they may not have had time to do it or they don't consider it an important enough reason. Lets face it AT may give players some help but not as much as Damage maxing armors and ASI/CTR maxing UVs and Penta trinkets.

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 10:47

Deleted-Knight

1) Depends what you mean by "better". AT is a scapegoat. If it were removed and everything else stays the same, people will find something else to be the primary scapegoat for their deaths. It would however, eliminate some play styles that people find annoying (eg. AT Antigua spam, mindless Acheron combos).

2) Nope, unless OOO completely overhauls the system. There's too much overpowered gear, the ridiculous mechanics are now public knowledge, and connection strength now plays a larger factor in determining performance (Many games, the damage scores are like connection strength ratings. There's far too much correlation to be the result of my end).
Of course there's also the problem that SK itself is quite dull and repetitive for end-game players. It's a game based on exploration with very slow development. Not a good combination.

3) 90% of the time, not really. It's horribly repetitive, but I don't have the hardware to run better real time PvP games.

4) Because AT is optional. You can remove it by unchecking the box. What you're asking is "Why doesn't OOO force people to not use AT in PvP even if they are used to it in PvE?"
That sort of question is a slippery slope for a design team. Should OOO also force people to wear cobalt armor? Should OOO also force people to have trinkets?

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 11:31

Sweetsundere

*AT Song*

1) Yes.
2) Nope, at this point SK has a terrible rep that won't really bring new people or the old players back.
3) I haven't played in a month or two, so no.
4) They're bad at programming. Can't change a single True to False in the code.

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 11:54

Kneeanderthal

^LOL @#4

Thanks for your answers guys (and to those who explained your opinion, interesting views as well)

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 20:32

#10

Sipsy

1. Yes - Would make it easier to focus on playing rather than taking brain damage from the chat
2. Nope.
3. Yes, why else would you play a game?
4. It's not a big problem, it's just overrated.

Wed, 09/02/2015 - 06:40

#11

Exiled-Gremlin

1) No, why would it be better

1) No, why would it be better without a thing that you can turn off, it's not even cheating, so, why would it hurt if it doesn't give you limitations to fight against a person with turned on AT(except you're in lockdown for not a long time). People giving AT too much attention.
2) Probably yes, if three rings would have paid more attention for balancing gear and updating lockdown (new maps, more game modes, tournaments released by ooo, etc)
3) Not much, I want to try out some gear t have more fun but I need to heat it and roll uv's, you need fully upgraded slots in most cases to have some helpful bonuses and not to be weaker than any experienced lockdown player
4) They didn't think it's important to remove AT, but I have one more thought that looks more truthful, the game code is so messed up devs didn't want to try hard about adding such feature.

Sun, 09/06/2015 - 08:29

#12

Dibsville

I know I'm not popular here (right?), but here's my two cents

1) No. I think Lockdown would be better if keyboard users did not have access to AT. You blatantly say "completely removed", though I personally think those with a gamepad should still have access to it (if you don't understand why, then try using a gamepad to play Lockdown. In fact, try using a gamepad literally anywhere in the game).

2) Yes, actually. Well, no. There are quite a few ways that Lockdown could become quite popular-- from the playerbase outright increasing, to the toxicity of AT arguments decreasing, Lockdown has quite a lot of ways to become more popular, but to the levels of 2012/2013... it's like a shot in the dark if the target wasn't even there.

3) In random Lockdown, all I ever do is goof off; my team may hate it-- hell, the other team may even hate it-- but I thoroughly try my best to enjoy the minigame as much as possible, and I have to say I do have fun while playing.

4) There have been devs in the past that have stated that it's simply not that easy to actually remove AT from Lockdown. It simply can not be done in a way that pleases all players, because, there's a crowd of three/four different types of players: those with good connections, those without good connections, and those who play using a gamepad (and people who play with a gamepad and don't have a good connection, but I'm not counting that). Of those three types of players, generally there's only one that wants AT gone: that being those with good connections. If the reason for this isn't obvious enough, then perhaps you've just never truly experienced lag (and don't be that one guy that comes up and says "But I have a bad connection and I think AT should be gone". You're a small minority in a very large group, not to put words that weren't said in a lot of other peoples mouths, but in general it's pretty clear why these people don't want AT gone).

Personally, I think they should just make it so that AT is off by default, and keyboard players can't use AT at all, but gamepad players can bind their "Toggle Auto Target" button to their action button (only on their gamepad); this would please both parties, but those with bad connections would still be heavily affected. Still, 2/3 crowds of people being pleased is better than 1/3, and besides, it's not like people with bad connections complain about having to use AT, they usually complain about their bad connections instead, so I doubt this would even affect them.

Sun, 09/06/2015 - 11:55

#13

Krakob

As a long time gamepad user, I disagree. AT is as broken on gamepad as it is on m+kb. Sure, it's harder to aim, but you don't need a lot of practice to be able to nail the 45 degree window for guns or the 90 degree window for swords. I can definitely see the game working out with some form aim assistance for gamepad or keyboard only, but AT as it is currently just isn't it.

I think people give AT more credit than it deserves in terms of playing with gamepad - I can do really well even with Brandishes nowadays. Earlier, I thought I wouldn't be able to but after using Acheron for a while I learned that 75% of doing well with it is knowing your latency, predicting your opponent, and having good positioning. I'm no m+kb player but I'm quite sure that largely applies to m+kb as well, even if you can get better aim. So yeah, AT lets you go bonkers offensive with no drawbacks but you don't need it at all to do well with a gamepad.

Sun, 09/06/2015 - 12:11

#14

Klipik-Forum

1) Do you think LD would be better with AT completely removed from it?: More competitive? Yes. More skill-based? Yes. More fun? For me, yes. More welcoming to new players? No. More popular? no. "Better"? That's a terrible question. Be more specific.

2) Do you think LD can ever become as popular as it used to be in 2012/2013?: Only if SK does.

3) Do you have fun when you play a game of LD?: Not right now, because the style I like to play is an old meta and I'm not good enough at it to counter the new meta.

4) Why do you think OOO has kept AT in LD, despite extremely strong support or its removal? Do they lack the capability to do it, or are they just unwilling, or a different reason?: For one, OOO has said they might do a general PvP rebalance at some point, but they don't want to make a small change and break it. I think the main reason is because they have other priorities, but they also know that the vocal group is not always the biggest, and not always right.

Tue, 09/08/2015 - 05:33

#15

Leekcoco

But I have a bad connection and I think AT should be gone. I doubt 1-bar players would rather continue to get hit with air by people with already good connection comboed with AT than to deal with learning to aim. Once your latency hits 250+ ping AT barely registers anymore. It's like the people using the high-ping players as their reason for supporting AT aren't even high-ping players themselves, or play LD that often.

1) Yes
2) No
3) Sometimes
4) Priorities

Sat, 12/26/2015 - 07:24

#16

Manava

Too much spam about a thing

Too much spam about a thing like AT
well I am the only one who think that but AT is pretty fair option cuz not everyone can do the same as you do also if you are good at aiming then its almost the same as if you have AT on. playing on other players rules not even in my dream we need chat off option :D.
if it tournament then IDC your money your rules lol.
we don't need these nobility acts

Sun, 12/27/2015 - 12:38

#17

Retequizzle

yes

let's bump a topic that's become so old it can apply for medicare

your opinion on it truly matters, even though no one's posted in this thread for three months

Mon, 12/28/2015 - 01:29

#18

Knightofheaven

HI RET

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Thoughts on AT currently?