the reason why we listen to our parents, teachers, coaches, etc is becuz they have more experience in life, math, football etc. That's why you listed to them.
I know Lewin adressed this part in his post but I must improve his metaphore - if you ask a teacher "why (...)?" and he answers "BECAUSE i SAY SO, DON'T YOU DOUBT MY AUTHORITY AS A TEACHER, I'M MORE EXPERIENCED THAN YOU", is he a good teacher?
Exactly, that's the main issue here. If experienced players politely explain things to us then we'll definitely be listening and want to learn from them.
I think it's a bit sad some people need to be told in the KaM community (of all places) that they need to be polite against other people. I can image that some people spend many time playing this game on a daily basis (including myself). Still it's not intended to be the place where we need to tell others how to behave. I hope that in real life you've already learned that you should treat someone else like you want to be treated yourself. Yep, your're right it's called respect. Anyway, I can continue about this but I think I shouldn't because (even if this topic is to discuss things like this) we rather spend our time discussion gameplay itself (and improving the Remake in particular).
Yeah I agree. I guess people do it because on the internet they're anonymous and can say whatever they like without affecting their real life. I know this is how it often is on the internet, but until recently it has not been like this in the KaM community. It is indeed sad, and very unproductive.
1. Since the original TSK came out I've always played singleplayer, there was no other option. I think the AI wasn't the worst of all I've seen comparing to other games I played but even if the developers manage to improve the AI it will never be better then playing against humans. Maybe only if you let the AI use cheats or something but that's not real skill is it? I've always wanted to play multiplayer. Before the Remake we used Gameranger but it didn't work like it should. TPR couldn't be played at all in multiplayer. My point is this, why should I play singleplayer again? I've done that for 15 years and it's not much fun or challenging playing the campaign for the 16th time. Yes, bored with playing the same maps again I also created maps for myself and played some maps I found on the internet back then. Ofcourse I understand that some people like to play singleplay in the Remake. But I think the real change the Remake brought us is that (finally after all those years) you can play a bugless multiplayer game. I also think that's the main reason the Remake is this popular. Since I have no part in programming myself I shouldn't tell you what to do but my advice is to keep focussed on the multiplayer aspect of this game.
Yes, we are primarily focused on multiplayer because that's probably the most popular feature of the Remake. For example we nerfed archers a while back to balance multiplayer better, which required most of the campaign missions to be slightly adjusted in some way to balance it. Some people who like singleplayer complained, but we believe we made the right decision. Some players do just want to play the campaigns again with all the new features of the Remake, and those people shouldn't be ignored. So we're happy to tweak the gameplay to make multiplayer better, but we don't want to completely break singleplayer. Both are important, but multiplayer will usually dictate which balance changes are needed. However I don't believe either is needs to be compromised by any balance changes. Singleplayer missions can always be adjusted a bit to compensate. That said, I don't like the idea of changing the core features of KaM, for example hunger should be an important factor in gameplay (as it is now) and towers should be able to kill more than 1-2 units per 5 stones (I think tower spam can be fixed other ways). We shouldn't change KaM massively just to solve minor issues encountered by skilled players, I think we can find ways to solve these issues without seriously messing with the game mechanics. But we're happy to discuss it as always.
2. With that being said I like to respond on what Lewin said about not wanting to make the Remake to difficult to master for beginners. I think in general that besides having fun when playing any game (could be Pac Man or KaM) there is also the factor competition/contest. I never heard of people who like to lose a game. Loosing a game isn't bad aslong as you learn from it. Improve your strategies/gameplay and you might win next time. Yes, KaM shouldn't be hard to play for beginners but I think it's really difficult to master the game. I have never saw someone play a flawless game. In other words there is always something to improve. This can be said of most games but I think it's in particular true for KaM. If this game was easy to master I think I've stopped playing it by now. I think playing it on a ''high level'' is very demanding. Maybe that's the reason why the game runs this slow. Common mistakes for instance are not having enough coal to keep your coal demanding buildings running. Another one is noy having enough wood to keep building and producing weapons at the same time. Or have your build ready before peacetime ends. And the list goes on and on. This game is all about making the right decisions at the right time And this is even more true for things like managing your army. Do I spam a unit more then another, will I use horses this time, should I flank the enemy or not, etc. So the fun factor is different for people, some like to attack while others rather defend. Some like to rush with many militia only while others like to train small groups of different units to effectively counter enemy forces. However, I assume the competition factor is for everyone the same since nobody likes to lose. In order to improve yourself and win more often players need to be experienced. And especially in multiplayer games you learn to play better since humans are smarter then computerplayers. You learn even faster if you play with players with a ''high level'' like Fried Chicken explained.
Of course we don't want KaM to be easy to master, we want it to be easy to play when you are a less skilled player without struggling too much. Of course you shouldn't do nearly as well as an experienced player, but you should be able to have a game without starving to death every time and feeling completely overwhelmed by the complexity of the game. Experienced players will be much faster and make better decisions, but if a group of equally inexperienced players all sit down at a LAN party and have a game, they should have a fun and fairly balanced game, although it would probably take them 2 hours to make as many troops as an experienced player makes in 1 hour. The competitive side of the game is important, but it shouldn't become so focused on competitive play that it's not possible for some random guys to sit down and have a fun game when they're not skilled. For example we could make the game a lot harder, more hunger, less resources available, higher trade rates at the market, etc. and these things might be popular with highly skilled players, but if it becomes so hard that new players starve and run out of resources every time they play then they'll get completely put off by the game and stop playing. Yes these players will probably all want to learn and improve, but if they can't have a bit of fun while they're learning then they won't keep playing the Remake. We need a balance between making the game good and fair for experienced players with lots of depth to improve your skill, and making the game fun for less experienced players who want to play more casually.
Some of us simply master the game better then others. That's the reason skilled players like to play together. It's no fun to beat a beginner. Besides that if you know against who you are playing you also know they won't leave the game for nothing or lag too much and things like that. I'm not saying we never play with someone we don't know. It's even better to invite 2 of them to make teams balanced. My point is that if you play with the best players available you improve the most. At this level of gameplay we see certain buildings (towers) or units (mass crossbows + mass lancers) being abused. These things might be overlooked by people who play at a ''lower level''. That's why we bring things like this up here at the forum in the hope it will be fixed somehow. This is not the topic for discussion about towers or lancers so I won't complain about it here. BTW I don't like words like pro or noob either but everybody seems to understand what they mean, thats also important.
I agree, experienced and highly skilled players will notice things that are exploitable and abusable, and we really want these players to tell us about these things, because they'll be the ones that notice these kind of issues. But if those players can't be polite about it, and can't explain the problem and just saying something like "you should take our word for it because we're experienced" then we'd rather they didn't post at all. We need to understand the problem and understand why their suggested solution makes sense. And the suggestions to solve it should not compromise the game for beginners or people who like singleplayer (e.g. by making the game . We need to balance the changes across the entire spectrum of KaM, not just for the highly skilled games. Of course a lot of the balance issues encountered by skilled players won't affect the less skilled player's enjoyment of the game and can be solved fairly easily.
So I agree with what you wrote To, and we really do want the experienced players to tell us of the kind of balance problems they encounter!
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
But politeness and respect in our community matter a lot to us, we really don't want to see the community pulled apart by people being rude and arrogant. I don't care how experienced you are, if you don't have time to be polite then I don't have time to care about your opinion. I'm not being paid to listen to you (in fact I'm given up my free time), so if it's not enjoyable for me then why should I bother? And I don't find it enjoyable when people refuse to be polite and don't respect other people.