22-05-2015, 01:26 AM
I'll preface this by saying this is not an official statement of the developer team's stance, these are my personal thoughts.
I don't have a strong polar opinion about kiting one way or another. I do see reasons for it but I also see reasons against it.
The main reason I see for kiting is to get servers started and to be able to do something during quite periods. To expect a full team of players to all agree to start a Ragnarok at the same time is not very realistic. A counter to this argument might be that the early waves should be easy enough for a small team to get through without much trouble but to have a point come where you need a proper team of players.
Moving to an extreme, I do not like the idea of one player being able to reach wave 20 of Ragnarok alone. A team of well equipped players should be a requirement for getting to the end of the hardest mode of the game. I'm not sure anyone here actually wants one player to be able to kite all the way to 20 but I might as well state my opinion while I'm at it.
One of my main complaints with kiting is that it relies on the fact that ranged players are faster than the bots and that the AI is too stupid to spread out and cut off the players running in endless loops. It strikes me as glitching and something undesirable. If our maps were long corridors with a fixed length, I might have a different opinion. Granted, on some maps the cading strategy also relies on the stupidity of the AI since the bots don't flank around the sides of the barricades but in many positions, that is not a factor.
Another of my complaints about kiting is that only ranged players can participate - for the most part, only archers and pikemen. I see this as a factor that might encourage players to ignore the slower tankier classes that are necessary for a normal balanced run.
One of the arguments in favor of kiting which I sympathize with is that camping does get boring after a while. You are always standing behind the shielders and shooting at nords attacking them or slashing between the shields. I would argue that kiting is very repetitive also and is not a great alternative. If you are alone or in a well organized team, you are running around in the same pattern always shooting at nords, running away, shooting at nords, running away, until you finish the wave. It could be argued that you need more skill to get headshots and stay organized but I still see it as monotonous.
Going back the the corridor I mentioned earlier, I'd rather see some sort of run where a full team of ranged and infantry make a series of tactical retreats from one impromptu camp area to the next as the waves are incoming. There would be no real "base" that everyone stays in; much more of the map would be in use with more variety. No for reality to set in - this has been a long standing idea shared by other developers and a good way to implement it has not been worked out yet. It looks great in my mind but it is hard to make happen.
Back to kiting... I'm open to the idea that kiting can get you to a certain point and there might be some reasonable reward for your efforts but unless there is a way to prevent very small teams from obtaining it easily/reliably, I want that reward to be less than that of a team of various classes working together. I really don't want people to end up scattering to many unpopulated servers and avoiding other players since they think they have a better chance isolated. The role I currently see for kiting is an alternative that is less rewarding but doable for when there isn't a full team available.
I'll end by trying to gather my thoughts into a simple list of personal opinions:
- Small groups should not be able to reach wave 20 of Ragnarok reliably, our hardest mode, no matter how they play. It is a battle against the Nord gods after all.
- Kiting can be useful for getting runs started.
- Kiting should give some reasonable reward.
- Kiting should not be more rewarding than a balanced team of various classes.
- Kiting is not an ideal alternative to cading.
Again, I am not speaking for the developer team, these are just some of my thoughts about kiting. There a few arguments in there that are probably obvious and not in dispute but I've already typed them so I'll not bother removing them now. I feel like there are still a few ideas bouncing around my brain that I did not include here but they will have to wait for another post.
I don't have a strong polar opinion about kiting one way or another. I do see reasons for it but I also see reasons against it.
The main reason I see for kiting is to get servers started and to be able to do something during quite periods. To expect a full team of players to all agree to start a Ragnarok at the same time is not very realistic. A counter to this argument might be that the early waves should be easy enough for a small team to get through without much trouble but to have a point come where you need a proper team of players.
Moving to an extreme, I do not like the idea of one player being able to reach wave 20 of Ragnarok alone. A team of well equipped players should be a requirement for getting to the end of the hardest mode of the game. I'm not sure anyone here actually wants one player to be able to kite all the way to 20 but I might as well state my opinion while I'm at it.
One of my main complaints with kiting is that it relies on the fact that ranged players are faster than the bots and that the AI is too stupid to spread out and cut off the players running in endless loops. It strikes me as glitching and something undesirable. If our maps were long corridors with a fixed length, I might have a different opinion. Granted, on some maps the cading strategy also relies on the stupidity of the AI since the bots don't flank around the sides of the barricades but in many positions, that is not a factor.
Another of my complaints about kiting is that only ranged players can participate - for the most part, only archers and pikemen. I see this as a factor that might encourage players to ignore the slower tankier classes that are necessary for a normal balanced run.
One of the arguments in favor of kiting which I sympathize with is that camping does get boring after a while. You are always standing behind the shielders and shooting at nords attacking them or slashing between the shields. I would argue that kiting is very repetitive also and is not a great alternative. If you are alone or in a well organized team, you are running around in the same pattern always shooting at nords, running away, shooting at nords, running away, until you finish the wave. It could be argued that you need more skill to get headshots and stay organized but I still see it as monotonous.
Going back the the corridor I mentioned earlier, I'd rather see some sort of run where a full team of ranged and infantry make a series of tactical retreats from one impromptu camp area to the next as the waves are incoming. There would be no real "base" that everyone stays in; much more of the map would be in use with more variety. No for reality to set in - this has been a long standing idea shared by other developers and a good way to implement it has not been worked out yet. It looks great in my mind but it is hard to make happen.
Back to kiting... I'm open to the idea that kiting can get you to a certain point and there might be some reasonable reward for your efforts but unless there is a way to prevent very small teams from obtaining it easily/reliably, I want that reward to be less than that of a team of various classes working together. I really don't want people to end up scattering to many unpopulated servers and avoiding other players since they think they have a better chance isolated. The role I currently see for kiting is an alternative that is less rewarding but doable for when there isn't a full team available.
I'll end by trying to gather my thoughts into a simple list of personal opinions:
- Small groups should not be able to reach wave 20 of Ragnarok reliably, our hardest mode, no matter how they play. It is a battle against the Nord gods after all.
- Kiting can be useful for getting runs started.
- Kiting should give some reasonable reward.
- Kiting should not be more rewarding than a balanced team of various classes.
- Kiting is not an ideal alternative to cading.
Again, I am not speaking for the developer team, these are just some of my thoughts about kiting. There a few arguments in there that are probably obvious and not in dispute but I've already typed them so I'll not bother removing them now. I feel like there are still a few ideas bouncing around my brain that I did not include here but they will have to wait for another post.
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