Spiral Knights - The latest update shows quite a lot of incompetence.

The latest update shows quite a lot of incompetence.

13 replies [Last post]

Thu, 10/22/2020 - 04:07

Blueespeon

The last 3 words of the title aren't really news, but anyways... Let's ignore the fact they decided to fix something after 9 months of us begging for an obvious change : Reverting an unintended and bad change, which they pretended was intended.

The problem here is the Lockdown zoom. Looks like GH is unable to find a way to patch very simple client-side cheats. With the uprising of mods caused by how starved people were of content, the fact the ''developers'' (assuming they even have real developers left in the team) are helpless against cheats and had to implement the Lockdown Zoom mod into the game pretty much, it makes one think of how much worse this could have been. Imagine if the mod that got popularized was visible Recons instead.

Thu, 10/22/2020 - 10:52

Sir-Sappy

Do we ACTUALLY know if cheating was the reason that the zoom was added? Was it ever claimed to be or is this just an assumption?
There was also a problem with off-screen invisible bombs (which is a pretty bad bug if you have your settings low), and being attacked from below consistently.
I can't think of any other reasons off the top of my head. Not that I doubt people cheat in Lockdown at all or that I get salty at the thought "Is this person cheating?", I just don't know how many players do it nor have I seen any of them flat out admit it or have players talk about a certain knight cheating through all my playtime.
EDIT: This was specific to Lockdown, I know many players who use the zoom mod in normal gameplay, and I never said I doubt that players don't use these mods for lockdown.

Thu, 10/22/2020 - 05:46

Blueespeon

If you ask me, most certainly. Why would they add it otherwise? They aren't willing to bother fixing a small ammount of lines to fix neutralizer or to release things that are already ready in the code in order to improve the game. Why would they want to improve lockdown?

Coincidentally, this happened not long after they started taking Knightlauncher videos down.

Obviously people won't admit they're cheating in game or forums. Why would they admit things in the singular, only place where they risk being banned, when they could say it pretty much anywhere else instead?

Thu, 10/22/2020 - 06:31

Thats-Rough-Buddy

@Sir-Sappy Here is some

@Sir-Sappy

Here is some evidence for ya

https://imgur.com/a/zRWoOHz

(edited out the player's name out of respect for their privacy)

But as you can see, on September 3rd, this user used the cheat to view the entire map. There was another video but I couldn't find it, of someone in lockdown using this same exploit.

And keep in mind, these are only players that uploaded a video with it. Imagine how many more people are using this.

Quite creative, but cheating nonetheless....but who really plays fair anymore (I hope at least some do...)

Thu, 10/22/2020 - 08:50

Jessecho

sad, exclamation point

They aren't willing to bother fixing a small ammount of lines to fix neutralizer or to release things that are already ready in the code in order to improve the game.

This is why I don't buy that GH is doing fine and the complainers are the problem. Even being underpaid doesn't excuse you from doing a serviceable job. When they now show no interest in improving the game until you spend a year requesting a small change, but continue to add box promos, it makes it hard to see them as altruists keeping the game open for the fans.

Cronus, please pass this on: you could probably hire a developer to fix all of these bugs and pay them with a ham sandwich, free water, and whatever change you have in your pocket. There are a lot of recent graduates out here in the States desperate for work in these trying times, and working on a small MMO could be the first gig they need to break into software engineering.

Thu, 10/22/2020 - 12:29

Top-Platinum

And it's not fixed yet. Truly

And it's not fixed yet. Truly embarassing.

Thu, 10/22/2020 - 13:11

Yatez

disagree!!

the zoom in LD provides a very small change. Most of the people who play LD consistently are good enough to know where players are regardless. In addition to that, the argument that this zoom ruins recon is dumb b/c you still can't see recon when they are invisible and the vast population of LD players play striker anyways. Also with the whole "zoom" hack issue, if this update was implemented into actual gameplay then you would have a point. the LD zoom is smaller.

Also, that zoom that you see in the video isn't a mod, but an actual script. It's not available in the masses like most of the mods are. only a small population of players have it.

I understand you are upset, but you have to realize that the zoom in LD doesn't really change anything. Theres no new "zoom meta" because 95% of the players still don't use the zoom anyways.

Thu, 10/22/2020 - 13:41

Blueespeon

Underpaid??? UNDERPAID???

Jesse, they're 2-5 man team at most, and they get huge loads of cash for doing an extremely minor ammount of work whenever there's a promo. I highly doubt it costs them more than a tenth of their profit to keep the fame running. Probably way more. Specially considering they have servers on the low end of passable qualities.

Thu, 10/22/2020 - 13:43

Blueespeon

Yatez, firstly, the equivalent of zoom mod effectively made Recon unplayable. Secondly, by " visible recons mod " i'm ralking about the mod that lets you see recons when they're cloaking. Additionally, the zoom mod became extremely popular and easily accessible through KL. The person who runs it patched it out via KL afaik, but people can just unpatch it themselves easily as it's all client side anyways.

Thu, 10/22/2020 - 13:51

Jessecho

digging a deeper hole @Yatez

If that's true, that would make GH even less competent, because they wasted time on an update for a mode that few people play, which barely changed anything, and no one asked for, when they could have picked from a mountain of small issues with the main game to fix in addition to the Shadow Lair fix that never should have been necessary.

Thu, 10/22/2020 - 16:17

#10

Zenphyre

So this again lol.

I'm not surprised that some are still complaining on a minigame that only accounts for a small part of the main game. Also the fact that said minigame doesn't reward much (besides the PvP recipes needed, bombheads, trinkets and whatnot but once you have what you need, there's really nothing much more from there) unless you count high damage whether you win/lose and gaining seconds of fame until the next match as a reward.

I play LD on and off and right now I'm currently off and not planning on returning anytime soon. I haven't checked out the actual zoom feature yet because of not playing it but if it does cover the entirety of the map, then it's a huge advantage for people with large monitors and a disadvantage for recons. Personally I don't care about this because if it's just a toggle feature like the minimap then I'm pretty sure some will demand no zoomed out map weekends lol. I mean what's next first person LD feature? (Actually that one would be pretty cool cuz then you'd get surprised by instant recon spooking hehe).

Aside from that, what does boggle me on this is (I may be wrong) that whenever I get on (live west coast USA) and I check random/guild matches, there haven't been any at all for almost the recent amount of days I logged on. Even during peak times (weekends) there really haven't been many unless I get on during the wrong times but I doubt it. Before there'd be at least one or two matches that spanned for a few hours but now it's the rare one match and then it's done. I've seen EU as well and normally when those happen it's just 1v1's going on but again, could be timing. It can also account school/work and stuff but with a pandemic going on I'm sure some have a bit more time but meh.

Mentioning some things before as well like: same LD people everyday not much diversity going on, same sets, toxicity still running rampant, etc. So yeah, strange how this is going on while considering the fact that GH is still a museum company to house games on life support. Once in a while an update will occur which is fine and all, just don't expect constant ones. But hey if the updates aren't to your liking just play another game lol; this can't be the only game on your PC. xD

Thu, 10/22/2020 - 18:56

#11

Blueespeon

@Zenphyre

I don't actually care or play LD.

The problem here is GH being so unable to do things they have to put client side cheats into the game in order to fix the cheating problem

Fri, 10/23/2020 - 08:29

#12

Top-Platinum

I have nothing but respect

I have nothing but respect for players like Blueespeon. I already lost hope in this company and looking at some of these replies (and pure silence by many others) I'm also losing hope in this community. Who defend cheats, who belittle it (and get clapped as soon they jump in) and who simply doesn't do or say anything about it. It's hard to keep motivation when GH and the community is like that.

Sun, 10/25/2020 - 20:51

#13

The-Ancient-One

So. There's a lot I could say but I'll keep it concise.

Programmers have to choose between working on SK and getting what little money we can put forwards for them, or working at like, Lockheed Martin for a bazillion dollars an hour, doing roughly the same thing. Actually I take that back. SK is an MMO, and that makes it harder to work on than Lockheed Martin's missiles or whatever. Harder, and more time consuming. I kid you not, I have friends in various industries and we compare notes.

That being said, we have seen actual changes that require some amount of knowledge to create recently. I think that we should applaud this, because it shows that they care enough to hire someone for us which, again, is a big deal.

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The latest update shows quite a lot of incompetence.