Spiral Knights - Calling out excuses for broken mechanics.

Calling out excuses for broken mechanics.

15 replies [Last post]

Sun, 10/28/2012 - 21:07

Sir-Lancaster

After playing more lockdown since my last post and through heated arguments with likewise strong-willed players, I feel compelled through reignited anger and indignation to go over and tear apart common excuses for the current imbalances in weapons and gear in LD that I am now absolutely sick of hearing. As with the last post, this is not a suggestion thread as I would not know nor do I have the self-confidence to propose solutions that would be fair to the whole community. However, I feel that as long as I am allowed to spew my bile, others should be welcome to do likewise for their own gripes and grievances.
Please, join in. Vent your hearts out!
Since I’m venting, I might as well say that this game’s community really shows its true age in lockdown. I have never played with such a childish, cruel, hateful, small-minded, intolerant, hypocritical, and an over-all ‘mean’ player base. Having played a hearty amount of Counterstrike and Quake in my lifetime, I believe that such a statement should warrant some concern. I wanted to make the most out of the investment in getting to the end game. I didn’t want to stop playing after all the hours and items I had alchemized and thought lockdown would give me something to do until new content could show up. I like competition and PvP, but it’s this sort of clannish, hive-minded, and hateful group-think that can dissuade even the most thick-skinned players from playing this game after getting to Tier 3.
FYI – I like to play as a gunner recon, and second to bombers, we have received the short end of the stick that repeatedly jabs us in the eye.

Some warning: I may be more irate than the last time I posted, as these are all somewhat more subjective in topic, as they come almost entirely from my own opinion.

“Polaris is meant to be spammed”
Bull[scrap]. No weapon is “meant to be spammed”! Spamming in of itself is a broken mechanic akin to ‘Bunnyhopping’ in old Source Engine (Source Engine 1) games like the first few Quakes. That and the fact that it could be spammed is merely an oversight by the developers who never planned for it to be used against other players. In the clockworks all you fight are AI-controlled monsters that have no feelings or truly care for such things as “fairness”. In LD that changes as we DO have feelings and DO care about small things like FAIRNESS.
If spamming Polaris is OK in LD just because it’s OK in the clockworks, then OOO should also remove invinciframes: because enemy monsters don’t have them, why should enemy players?
Actually, that sounds like a good idea! If they did that, fast-hitting weapons like the winmillion, cutters, autoguns, and antiguas would be fixed as they are all SEVERELY limited as they are now with those accursed frames.
However, I have a feeling that said strawmen would then cry like the pandered-to babies they are, about how “OP” these weapons would become due to the lethal effectiveness of their theoretical spam. To which, I’d LOVE to then tell these brats “Tough, ANTIGUAS WER MENT 2 BE SPAMD! LOL”.

As long as I’m dreaming though, I might as well ask for a pony.

“Don’t like AA? LOL U SUCK AT DODGING” / “Anyone can use AA, OOO made it part of the game players should use it / AA isn’t even noticeable.”
No. AA is a crutch. Don’t BS me with the whole “What about the players with bad connections?” You, sir strawman, do not have a connection so bad that you need AA yourself. It is a crutch because you do not have the skill or the aptitude to become a better player and you need some lines of code to do the aiming for you. Yes, AA IS NOTICEABLE. There is no way that your reaction time is that good, and there’s not a snowflake’s chance IN HELL that you hit me from 8 tiles away while I was invisible. Here is a video showing such:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq2qJv6MU5A
AA is another oversight from the clockworks that was NEVER meant for use in a competitive PvP setting. Yes, everyone and anyone can use it, but why should we (those not using it) be punished for not taking the cheap cop-put route in favor of aiming ourselves? While it might make it harder to lead while gunning, it makes dodging a swordsman exponentially more difficult. Aside from that, due to the way most LD guilds ban AA from their games, AA must make some noticeable difference that so many “pro” players consider it akin to cheating to use it.

“LD is balanced! The classes are good just the way they are”
This tells me that the strawman here has either not played as another class aside from striker or is in serious denial; perhaps both.
Perhaps this would be the logical answer from some high-and-mighty uber-player who has since lost touch with us mere mortals and forgets that we can’t all be near-invincible omni-classes like them.
[Since I have probably trodden on so many people’s toes with this post already, I might as well go so far and say that most of the “pros” I’ve seen so far have really more or less been “Elite Spammers” Skill? What a joke: they play like the newbies who spam Polaris and the Flourish line of weapons everywhere but have merely become more efficient at it. The weapons they use are easy, overpowered, and usually the most common. They do not take “the road least traveled” and instead have merely become masters of “the path of least resistance”.]
But back to my angry ranting: But this excuse is used by strikers of every tier and skill level. This tells me that this opinion is held because the entire class as a whole is too scared of any possible adversity or balance that would upset their excessive dominance of the playing field that they won’t even admit to there being a problem. Guardians have weak shield and have been reduced to essentially sitting in a corner with their shields up hoping none of the attacking strikers home-in on them. Recons have a cloak that breaks in a single hit and takes too long to recharge, with no survivability without it. While some may think this balances the class, it makes it impossible to actually help out in the giant brawls that break out in some games. Surviving the random and endless screen-filling spam is one challenge, but to actually help - especially recons - then need to do all of that without being hit. I’m game for class restraints and challenges, but the amount of skill that is required to just be somewhat-helpful in a fight before getting 2-hitted by a Sealed Sword is simply too high for anyone who plays this only casually.
It certainly does not require the same amount of skill for Strikers or even Guardians to do their classes’ jobs properly. For the amount of skill it takes to play an ‘OK’ recon, that person could have easily been a “pro” at guardian or striker had they invested it in either of those classes instead. At least in TF2 the Spy class became useful and dangerous for players who got good enough with it. In LD it is completely unrewarding when it takes 6 shots to kill a single person with guns while some idiot just rushes in, swings randomly, and finishes you off in two or three hits. If that’s not unfair, I don’t know what is. I have a feeling that these suck-ups also know on some level that the current issues with classes are legit, but would rather shrug it off as “n00bs need to lern 2 play” to serve their own interests.

“Balancing weps would mean another wep would become OP”
This is another weak excuse, used by people who don’t want to rock the boat because of their own petty self-interest in staying on top. TF2 - It is incredibly balanced, as there is no “best” weapon or class. Everything serves a purpose and everything has a set of pros and cons. Best of all though – things are not bland. The variety of weapons, gear, and (excessive) amount of hats is astounding and is constantly getting larger. Despite the volume of items, it is all still fairly balanced and everything has some sort niche and purpose to it that supports a certain play style. I’m not asking for more stuff: I merely want the existing stuff to have this level of purpose behind them. What purpose does a Winmilion serve? What play style maximizes the strengths of the Neutralizer line? And to finish, do they actually work? Why should anyone in LD use a normal damage Sudaruska or Troika over something from the Sealed Sword line? Are they feasible weapons that can be used in normal playing field conditions?
[Relating to classes, I don’t think Recons have this. The cloak cannot be used in regular combat conditions. Spam and statuses of any kind break the cloak. The recon is almost entirely dependent on the cloak to survive, and with the death mark, help the team. Because the cloak is so fragile and takes so long to regenerate it leaves most recons useless as they vainly attempt to run and hide from the spam. Guardians have it a little bit better, but even they feel too weak at times.]

OOO, is it fear of the entire swordsman player group that prevents you from fixing swords and classes? While I lost interest with WoW a long time ago, I will say that at least Blizzard had the balls to stand up to its players and balance it’s PvP. Granted, none of the nerfs and buffs truly ever balanced it, but at least they showed that they gave a toss and tried. Stop spoiling swordie/strikers and throw us other classes a bone here. You showed that you cared for balance when you found how easy it was to kill the Royal Jelly with the Dark Retribution, and then found it unfit that the RSS dominated the bomber arsenal. Perhaps it is time to do likewise in response to how easily a single class owns the only real feature worth playing after completing T3.

If there are other popular excuses I may have been late to mention, bring them up. The posts will be long, depending on feedback, but I will get to them eventually. Many of these are oft-repeated grievances, but if a problem or issue keeps coming up with such frequency that it floods the forumns, then that means there MUST be something horribly, horribly wrong – thus legitimising the complaint.

Sun, 10/28/2012 - 21:20

Aumir

Aaaaand

This is why I don't bother with Lockdown in a nutshell. If Blast Network has some special rules, why can't they modify our life to like, triple, disable autoaim, and more? They just threw it that there and left it to rot, and just throw one or two scenarios when people complained too much.

Sun, 10/28/2012 - 21:24

Sweet-Hope

If LD would mean to have

If LD would mean to have Default Weapons for every class, and every class would have a weakness agaisnt other class (lets say an example: recon are elementals but weak to shadow, striker are piercing but weak to elemental and so on) then LD would be another story of balancing and less clones. because every LD class would have default equipment so players will find the most useful class for them. but :P anyway i dont think LD would be change at this point.

Sun, 10/28/2012 - 21:54

Thenewteddy

There is far more balancing

There is far more balancing that needs to be done than just LD.

Frankly, it's all math. OOO should have access to this math as well.

We have three weapons. 1/3rd should use swords, 1/3rd should use guns, and 1/3rd should use bombs. There will be personal preference that will have an impact, maybe as much as 10% or more, but in general, no weapon should be under half the expected usage. This means there should be at least 1/6th of players using bombs as their main weapon on a regular basis.

I've not seen this. Frankly, in most of the missions or clockwork levels I've been on, I'm the only one using bombs. I once saw another guy use bombs for about a third of the stage, off and on, and, once ran into a guy on LD using bombs. Outside that, I am the only regular bomber that I know.

This is a clear sign of an imbalance. Similar math can and should be applied to other weapons and such things. If more than 2/3rds of your LD players are using the same class, there is a problem. If there are (for example) 5 "end game" guns, and 50%+1 of players use only one of them, there is a problem.

Sun, 10/28/2012 - 22:20

Luguiru

I use Mad Bomber for my actual armor (VDemo is usually just a costume) >98% of the time for everything, though I never play Lockdown and only play Blast Network to derp around and steal all the upgrades. If I have all four weapon slots available at least two of them always have bombs in them, usually one or both are Barrage and/or Graviton. The only swords I have used since about five months ago are GFaust and Dread Venom, though less than 20% of the time before the Halloween event was I actually using them. The only gun I have used in about the same time frame is Valiance which I have been using in place of a sword.

I will shove an Agni up all your rear ports before giving up bombing.

Sun, 10/28/2012 - 22:35

Zaderules

Several points from the OP:
Stop comparing TF2/WoW and SK. SK is a game made by OOO. It's their choice for dealing with matters. Having every game follow the same mechanism just isn't fun. Having variety of different playing styles from different games is what makes games unique. However, I'm not saying these different games shouldn't always be different. Some features suit for more than one game.

"You, sir strawman, do not have a connection so bad that you need AA yourself"
I have determined there are several types of lag.

First off is server lag. This is the lag that teleports you/changes your position every few minutes or at random instances.

Second is graphical lag. This is the lag that freezes your screen for a good second or two causing you to boost further than you expect or move in the same direction longer than expected.

AA can be turned on or turned off. The default is on. Some people are just too lazy or don't know that you go into the option menu and go to the controls and scroll all the way down and click the box. Other people feel AA helps them in lag, so let them be.

"There is no way your reaction time is that good"
Oh buddy. You don't know how fast people can react these days. Just 1 spark of something appearing on the screen, then BOOM you get attacked by them. Plus, I have seen people using a lot of mouse for aiming. So, you would expect their reaction wouldn't be that fast. Think about someone who uses full on keyboard to aim. Changing directions is as fast as pressing a button. I'm pretty sure pressing a button is faster than moving your damn cursor from point A to point B of the screen.

"While it might make it harder to lead while gunning, it makes dodging a swordsman exponentially more difficult."
This is true. But, so what if it's harder to dodge? Learn from it and think about other ways to counter it.

"In LD it is completely unrewarding when it takes 6 shots to kill a single person with guns while some idiot just rushes in, swings randomly, and finishes you off in two or three hits. If that’s not unfair, I don’t know what is."
Oh believe me. While I peg people with Valiance, having someone randomly come charging in and finish me in 2-3 swings feels like all of my effort of killing one person is just worthless. But, whatever, it's still fun annoying people. :d

"I merely want the existing stuff to have this level of purpose behind them."
I couldn't agree more than what you said. There should be more bosses or something that utilizes each weapon's specialty. This way, everybody would want more items, which would mean more CE is necessary...... Profit for OOO? :o

"OOO, is it fear of the entire swordsman player group that prevents you from fixing swords and classes?"
Hold up. I personally think OOO is just following what the three types of weapons would have realistically. Think about it. A sword is basically a hunk of metal used to whack at someone with full force, right? So, it's probably gonna do the most damage out of the three classes. A gun is shooting a tiny bullet from a far distance. Of course guns aren't supposed to be used by whacking people with full force. They're supposed to be used to peg people at a safe distance. And the bomb. A bomb is supposed to deal damage over an entire area, right? The closer you are to the detonation, the more damage you get. This aspect is seen in mist bombs. Also, this brings me to the RSS. Of course, I didn't like it when OOO took the best bomb (that was ONLY 4 star) in the game for pvp. But again, I think it's just OOO trying to make things more realistic here. Using a bomb like RSS in real life would harm your allies more likely than any other weapon classes (lol).

TL;DR OOO is probably just being more realistic here.

Sun, 10/28/2012 - 22:43

Asukalan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BydYgfCmekQ

Another victim of LD who cant just adapt and want everything changed for him

Sun, 10/28/2012 - 22:46

Luguiru

Rereading the original post a second time, I agree with everything for one collective reason: I hate clones. Not just people who use Wolver lines or Brandishes, the whole clone entity: relying on autoaim, spamming, and all that nonsense to do all the work for them because using that squishy blob between their ears is too difficult. I especially support the part about balancing.

There were a couple admin posts somewhere, one by Nick and another by someone whose name I forget (I think it was Cronus), but to summarize their posts:

Nick said his favorite weapon is Blitz (how unexpected) and he enjoys using it with Venom Veiler (the most support reliant bomb).

Cronus, or whoever it was, said their favorite weapon is Agni; but claimed to not care about how much damage they deal and simply use it to enjoy watching things burn. No neglect intended for gunners, but to bombers this is basically saying bombs are just for show and not area of effect damage. In fact, after a few seconds of going back through the pages in this section, here is the post and the exact quote:

"What is your Favorite Weapon in SK?
Ash of Agni. I love setting the aforementioned wiggling goo on fire. I don't personally worry myself about DPS, I just pick weapons I seem to enjoy. For example, I'm too impatient to deal with slower swords, so I tend to lean towards faster ones."
"I don't personally worry myself about DPS"

Are any of them real bombers? Can bombers talk to someone who knows what they are talking about from firsthand experience? What about gunners? We know they use normal accounts to play on, revealing their weapon preference is not nearly enough to identify their individual knight, so why would they not tell us?

Again, this is from an entirely Clockworks combat based perspective. You know, the part of the game which all our equipment was designed for originally. That thing with the floors and happy little animals that roll around in dirt.

Mon, 10/29/2012 - 00:24

Vagueabond

a few nitpicks, luguiru.

'Wanting to have fun with your available bombs doesn't mean you're not a bomber; heck, a lot of us got into the role because bombs looked so fun. Trying to insinuate that Cronus isn't a "real bomber" is No True Scotsman writ large.

Mon, 10/29/2012 - 01:12

Darkbrady

“Polaris is meant to be

“Polaris is meant to be spammed”

People will find a way to spam. Alch switching and sword switching is the very definition of spam; actually switching out weapons to increase the rate at which you attack, faster than intended. THAT is spam. Polaris "spamming" is just shooting the weapon as intended. The gun is OP because of the 3-clip size and just how effective it is at denying area, but that's got nothing to do with "spam".

be punished for not taking the cheap cop-put route in favor of aiming ourselves?

Just have to point out how stupid that sounds. That's like playing CoD blindfolded then insisting that everyone else is a failure because they're using their eyes. Fact is that AA is there and if you willingly, consciously choose to turn it off, knowing it'll put you at a disadvantage, then you automatically lose all right to complain. No one is forcing you to go without AA; you choose it because you think you're good enough to not need it, so you have no right to complain about people who either do use it or feel it helps. It's like complaining that other people use armour that's resistant to yours; it's competition, ofc people will take an edge if they can.

And no, I don't use AA at all, I'm a bomber.

Not that I'm disagreein' w/ you here, LD is pretty unbalanced in favour of strikers (not swordies; strikers) right now, and triple:max UVs allowing the offensive sets to tank better than any other set in the game has only skewed it drastically in favour of those with 20m to throw away. I do not at all approve that the offensive sets with such high attack bonuses are capable of tanking so many hits, while pure defensive sets have no chance of being as effective, despite their intention.

Mon, 10/29/2012 - 03:03

#10

Tuhui

...

I hate auto target, I don't hate it in clockworks but don't use it because i would like to hit where I'm aiming, but i hate it in LD. I hate the arguments for it, it's a game mechanic get over it, but it's a pvp, meaning it's competitive. There is no reason it should be in a pvp mini-game. It's easy to kill people when you can half-[scrap] your aiming and use weapons that have small hit boxes. In what universe is it right to kill someone you are not aiming at? We ALL get lag, no excuse for it. The people without lag will always do better than the people with if they are at around the same level of skill.

Why don't we find a new term for polaris "spam"? Why not abuse? I think it fits perfectly.

Bombs in general in this game are either support for guns and swords or are not effective as guns or swords at dealing damage.

Swords might get too much power but with guns you have to think in a ideal gun situation you are never getting close to a sword person. If striker were taken out of LD all you would see are gun clones, because nothing could get even close to a good gunner.

personal note: why are attack and interact the same key? not even an option to change it.

Mon, 10/29/2012 - 08:27

#11

Fehzor

Auto target is part of the game. You should be using it on your control scheme, just like you use shield on your control scheme. Want to aim? Autoaim at something with shift or whatnot. You don't say "Oh, well shield canceling is goofy, I'll just not." you use it to your advantage. AA is similar.

Otherwise, you've many valid points. Lockdown kind of sucks.

Mon, 10/29/2012 - 10:26

#12

Autofire

You are experiencing a PICNIC ERROR!

I enjoy a thread like this because it causes me to want to create some argument to resolve it. This time, rather then just using words, I'll use a SS comic. I hope you'll all be laughing by the time you finish reading it!

Mon, 10/29/2012 - 10:46

#13

Spaghetti-Knight

@Fehzor

What he meant is that it makes aiming easier, just like on some console shooters, considerably "casualizing" lockdown. Forced AA disabling would be the ideal solution in this case. As for the shield canceling, it kinda upsets me sometimes, since it's abused by max speedy toothpicks a lot, but I don't see many solutions for it...

As for OP, I do agree that lockdown is rubbish, despise your wall of text being bigger than an old Xbox...

Mon, 10/29/2012 - 16:24

#14

Spold

I really can't tell if this

I really can't tell if this is a rant about Lockdown excuses or an agreement about them.

Wed, 10/31/2012 - 11:26

#15

Sir-Lancaster

Wall of text, incoming

Thenewteddy:
While I agree strongly with the mathematical side to weapon damage/usage distribution, I believe more should be done in terms of “incomparables”: item traits and characteristics that improve or hinder a weapon other than raw damage output. For example, the Warmaster’s Rocket Hammer: regardless of whether you find this weapon annoying or average, it sets itself apart from the other high-damage, elemental, two-handed sword, the Divine Avenger, by throwing it’s user forward between the first and second swing. While I have my own personal gripes with this weapon, I do admit that I like how it was designed to be different despite sharing a similar niche stat-wise with the DA.

Zaderrules:
I appreciate the depth to which you dissected my OP.
I believe that you are missing the point of my comparisons to TF2/WoW/LoL/etc. I am aware of the differences, and respect that they are their own separate games. However, what I think is worthy of carrying over is the SPIRIT of Team Fortress’ item and weapon balance. I’m not making comparisons for the sake or favor of literal chunks of the former games being copy-pasted over what is in this one; I’m saying I would like it if some of the basic design insight of the gear was adopted so that nothing of the same tier will be truly left out. When was the last time you ever had to fight a bomber with a Big Angry Bomb, or Deconstructor? Some of these mostly “useless” weapons are even considered useless universally – neither of the aforementioned bombs in my previous example are used all that often in the clockworks either. Why are there redundant weapon branches and even entire lines that serve little to no purpose other than as novelty? As much as I love SK, I have to admit that TF2, LoL, and DoTA did this aspect of gameplay much better.
Many of your counterpoints to my contentions on AA stem from users simply not knowing better or actually requiring it to keep up due to latency issues. My rants were more targeted towards people who can play the game just fine, but use it anyways to make certain weapons such as the Rocket Hammer to become essentially walking cruise-missiles. I’m truly quite conflicted about what, if anything is to be done about AA – I agree in the sense that players with less-than-exemplary PCs and internet connections should get some assistance, but I’m rather annoyed at the way it gets abused by users with no actual lag issues but to compensate for their inability to target manually. Even if I had the power to do so, I would likely not remove it for the prior reasons.
Regarding your comment on utilizing weapon specialties, I actually did enjoy recent additions such as the Compound 42 Danger Mission for this reason. It made it very rewarding to have a Dragon Scale set; I don’t own one myself, but I’m aware that aside from as a costume piece, it’s not very well-used (similar to the fate of the Almirian Crusader Armour). It’s the kind of content I bum around LD waiting for.
I understand what you mean by saying that OOO is trying to be “realistic”, but I feel that the term is inaccurate – if it were being truly realistic, the guns would kill in a single hit, travel so fast that the bullets are invisible, and be able to hit you from the other side of the map if accounted for wind resistance and bullet drop. The bombs would kill the users instantly in their radius, and the swords would have to be cleaned of blood extensively after every match so that they do not rust or become dull. I was being a bit of a wise-ass there, as I understand that what you really meant was within the confines of the game’s style, and I actually agree with what you said. My issue instead comes down to execution. From a gunners perspective, they feel underpowered not out of the raw damage (or lack of) dealt, I expected this since the tutorial. The issue comes from lag making all the bullets (and this affects every gun, not just the slow ones) unable to hit directly and that the distances the bullets travel don’t give enough distance between the gunner and a striker. With the two coupled together, it means gunners have to be uncomfortably close to be able to reliably hit targets who are usually also moving around very fast. Because of this, despite recon being the “ideal” gunner class due to the bonuses, most expert gunners choose the striker loadout just to be able to maintain distance, making the former quite useless in comparison. Bombers I feel are too slow. While they are able to lock down points with mist bombs, I feel that removing RSS took away their only real offensive powers. Nitronomes and DBBs still pack a punch, but they don’t do nearly as well as the RSS line used to. When not using mist bombs, the time created by both the charge and the arming time make it easy for a striker to swoop in and finish them off. I like that Bombers have AoE as their niche, but my issue is that now they can only do DEFENSIVE AoE, thus limiting their action on a playing field. Unfortunately, I have no idea myself as to how such could be solved in a fair and balanced fashion without redacting all the progress they’ve made so far.
Swords – I think they are fine the way they are, but that all of them could do with less swing reach. Essentially, being only able to hit up to where the actual sword reaches. Sounds fair to me, and I think it would give something like the Winmillion (one of MANY things) some kind of greater advantage for its projectiles.

Askulan:
How condescending and lazy. The link made me chuckle at least before I moved on.

Luguiru:
Because I read every post, I checked your link and despite the long read, found it very interesting. Especially with repurposing certain underused armor sets and weapons. Well done.
I’m glad you picked up on my dislike of clones. While I have no qualms with players finding a gear and play style they are most comfortable with and enjoy using, it begins to bother me when a single play style overcomes all others and success in the game can only be achieved by assimilating with what is most popular; this point where it forces players to either becomes clones themselves or fail. It stifles gear experimentation and monotonizes the gameplay. What I like about lockdown is that aside from the fixed class bonuses and limitations, any combination of gear can be used. Why should only two or three variations of the same armor and weapons be the best? What I really want to see is more variety that is rewarded if done with a bit of cleverness instead of winning everything out of being able to 1-hit kill it. It will always be endemic in games, but it would be nice if there were other ways around it.

Darkbrady:
Having used alchemers extensively, I can attest that “spamming” them is much more difficult due to the relatively low bullet travel speeds and dependence on leading targets instead of directly shooting at them. However, I have to agree that fast switching them and firing faster than intended is, indeed, spam.
Auto Target is an oversight that was never meant for PvP. While as Zaderrules pointed out earlier, there are people who legitimately need it; however it seems like most people have seemingly fine latency and use it solely to gain an advantage over other players. While it is the default setting, I feel the advantage it gives is too great as it vastly changes the functions and effectiveness of some weapons to the point where it becomes obscene. Most people scoff at the cutter lines, but with auto target, the users become laser-guided chainsaws. I can attest through personal experience that AA partially removes invinciframes on cutters. Not entirely, but it allows users to stick closer to their targets and get every hit in – perhaps finally giving this line some punch, but in a way that most people find obnoxious.
From what I recall, this specific example of AA used with a cutter actually got the user a lot of hate and criticism from the other players, reinforcing the notion that while a legitimate feature in the game, AA is considered “underhanded”. Another example would be when it is used with Rocket Hammers. Without AA a rocket hammer requires skill to use without getting killed in the process or not hitting anything. With AA, the hammer becomes nearly pin-point accurate and almost impossible to dodge due to the code being able to change the swing direction near-instantly. I’m willing to bet most people will agree that AA makes hammer use profoundly easier and much more difficult to counter. My sentiment is largely backed off of my observations that most competitive PvP guilds enforce no-AA policies such as the outright banning of players who are caught using it. If both new players and competitive players who have sunk in gratuitous amounts of time into playing SK competitively think AA is cheap, then I can’t help but wonder if all the detractors and complainants may have a point.
My point is not to say that AA makes certain weapons “OMG OP”, but to illustrate my contention that it makes a significant difference and that, to an extent, it is perfectly reasonable for players who don’t use it to be pissed off by it.
What to do about it is another matter. Despite my antipathy towards it, I personally would not remove it. I do think that there needs to be some sort of assistance given to high-ping and non-mouse using players and AA as it exists now, I’ll admit, fits the bill quite nicely. Another reason why I don’t find myself fit to make suggestions.
I myself do not use AA because the concept itself bothers me: that I am not the one earning my score and my achievements, but that a machine is doing it for me – that I am some sort of inverse-autopilot for a line of code and a supremely-powerful set of skolver armor with a 2-hit kill sword that does it all FOR me. While I have neither the authority or any sort of moral high-ground to tell others of what I consider to be a sense of superior ethics or “honor code” (I believe myself to have neither), I believe it is a strong indicator of the character of the player behind the bot. To use AA despite having a decent connection tells me that they are playing more to stoke their egos than to have fun. It is reminiscent of the same kind of player who teabags other players after killing them with a rocket launcher in Xbox Live games of Halo (any of them, take your pick). Where a game isn’t about a test of skill against other players, but instead being about dominating other players in order to show off; to win at any cost, and to rig it so that it is always unfair in their favor.
Every community has these people, and nothing can be done to ever fix that, but I think of AA as being just another tool in their arsenal that well-intentioned players defend for the sake of helping out those with worse computers or don’t know any better.

Tuhui:
Exactly why I don’t want to see them removed. I don’t want whatever offends me banned or erased, I just want other classes and play styles to be able to counter and work around the skolver rush mentality better, so LD is no longer a question as to which side has the most clones, but WHO the players are and how their own take on the classes contributes. It bothers me that anyone who is not a skolver clone essentially becomes a liability for not being ultra-conventional.

Spaghetti-Knight:
I apologize for my verbosity and long-windedness. I type so much as to compensate for the limitations of non-verbal and text-based communication. While flawed, it is my attempt at trying to be as clear as possible in the expression of my thoughts.
I’m kind of iffy about making LD too complex though, I don’t think “casualize” can be used as a dirty word in this game because it is exactly the audience it panders to – casual gamers. This game is not like WoW or any other MMOs because it does not require long and extensive play times to achive certain milestones, which is honestly what got me hooked in the first place. It did not require a deep commitment to play to get ahead and allows me to advance at my own pace.
For all of my bellyaching about endgame PvP, I really do like the SK system in that allows the players to decide how much they want to invest into it. Granted, I think the CE system is a bit harsh, and exchange rates grow worse seemingly every day, but I can say I enjoy the philosophy of the game itself being easy to learn and difficult to master. Where the game is accessible to all, but with more time and skill invested the game becomes more complex, with players trying to counter other players, experiment with trinkets, loadouts, armor specialties, and etc.
This comes down to what bothers me: there IS a class/loadout that has mastered everything and remains largely invulnerable to any change in tactics or stratagem used against them. Why should there be an end-all set of gear? I think it ruins balance for this reason: it brings an abrupt end to the game.

Incization:
I intended it to be more of a series of rants AGAINST what I feel are over-used excuses in lockdown. I heard these spoken, either to myself or at another player. I copied them down, thought about them, and wrote what I found flawed in the logic behind them.

Search

Calling out excuses for broken mechanics.