Gamespeed + Leaver Discussion [Current problems in KaM]

[pawel95]

Hello boys and girls,

I want to open a valid dicussion that describes the problems since the last Release= The Game Speed.

First I want to tell you how it is now: !You can only play with players from Teamspeak!

You may ask why?

Well I normaly played in releases before the current one also many games with random people, which is ok. There are good and bad players, it is like in each other game.

However most of these players don´t want to understand what Gamespeed changes. I make a lobby with let´s say 75 min PT 1,5x speed in pt(to have at least a small chance, that someone will join).

After 20 min of waiting, the lobby is still empty. There were like 8 players in, but they realized its "ONLY" 1,5x speed so they leave.

Actualy the main problem is, that the players don´t get the point. They say they want x2,0 or even x2,5 speed,which is unplayable nearly, to "don´t waste that much time". The problem at this story is, they often want like 80-90 min of PT. When comparing to our gaming style of 60-70 min PT maximum!

I think it was already small talked about it here: We really should think about a game speed range from 1,0-1,25-1,5 (maximum up to x2,0).
I am not a guy from the development of players. However I think mostly of these players, that want that fast speed, never played the original kam tsk/tpr. That are young boys and girls playing fast games like egoshooters and co. I understand that, because I´m not that old either. Although the huge difference of KaM and "modern" games like Egoshooters is, that noone cares in your 32 player team, when you just leave the team and a new player will continue your ego shooter succes.

In many players opinion(that played the orginal games also) it´s a terrible changement because of that speed. Knights and Merchants were a slowly game where you can relax and have fun, even with a small army.
The problem is connected to an other problem: No accounts. So even when you play like 120 Min PT x3 x3(which is 0 funny) there will be some random guys that will leave 10 min before PT and the game is over. AND THAT IS REALLY WASTE OF TIME=>>> I saw it that often, players said they want to have at least x2,0 speed. Rehosted like 4 times after they already played 15 min and finally played like 2 hours with no fun and no army. In difference others played with the classical x1,0 speed and could finish nearly 2 full games.

About the leavers, I understand that it´s a huge amount of work to make thes account system and so on, but there is no way without it at the end.
There is actualy one current gamemode, that also needs at least 40 min time and when you´ll leave, your team will die= Dota 2(LOL...). When you will leave there you get a big penalty for it. It´s no problem when you reconnect because your pc shuted down. The fast is, I read on the valve side that before these punishments worked, in every 2,3th game you have at least one leaver. So let´s say every 2nd game is waste of time. I am not sure, but I think its nearly same number like in the Remake actualy. After the punishments were included and some more things like !report! butons(for trolls) or insults(which is also a problem at the remake, sorry i can´t translate that, but there is a huge discussion and publicy report of players: http://www.knights.sztab.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3316 , because they insult other players).


I know that you 2, Krom + Lewin aren´t playing that often the Remake now, at least not many full games That´s why I want to show you at least little bit, how the current state in the MP games is, because there were many trouble about "new building order" OK no problem, players made scripts to have the "original game" back. However there is no script yet to bring the "original game" with Original speedtime back....




I just wrote that post, after I waited for 50 min with a 1,5x/1,0 (70 min pt) lobby. (With a fake name, so there is no way to say: they only didnt played because it´s you )
So maybe there are many mistakes or huge grammar problems, then I have to say sorry. Just wanted to tell the current state of the mp games.


Feel free to commend your opinion about it, I guess I´m not the only one that had such finidngs :p


Pawel95

[dicsoupcan]

Well there are multiple sides to this.
i also noticed 1x speed games are gone and 1,5 speed games are very rare. if players want to play 120 pt 3x speed let them do it i say. and yes i full know that the reason i did not play much pub games is because of the high speed, but i think we should not restrict other players to play slower just because we do it.

however, i did notice that there is a lot of discussion and rage in the lobbies for gamespeed which both causes leavers and a longer time to setup a game. Sometimes you have an almost full lobby, then a person joins and starts demanding faster/slower gametime. This often results into various things:
- the player get's kicked or leaves by himself.
- the host changes the speed and the lobby becomes empty.

I think 2x speed is a point of discussion, but 2,5/3x speed is really too fast to have a good management even with training and we all know that kam is all about management.

Yes pawel you are right that the amount of pt nowadays is getting ridiculous, but that is the choice of the players. WE have no right to force them to play a lower pt just because we have our own standard 60 pt. you can however, try to challenge yourself by not making iron and stuff or play with players who do play on lower pt.

[pawel95]

Ok I got your point that we haven´t the right to "push" them to a lower speed. However its all about the development team i think They were some single questions on facebook or on the offical remake site asking for "faster games" however they do it because its possible. When the remake team would make a speed range from 1,0 up to 10,0, i guess we would have like 60% of lobbies with 5,0x or bigger speed. So the compromise I see is really the maximum of x2,0.

And yeah your totaly right about the managment thing, but most of players can´t understand it. They say they are noobs and have no army after 60 min, so they go for 80 min, but at same time they increase speedfrom 1,5 to 2,5 So there will have still no army, because with 2,5 speed you will have maxium 60% of that army, you have with full concentration at 1,0 speed.

[T*AnTi-V!RuZz]

I'm kind of having the same problem..

I rarely have time to play so when I do I open a lobby and just wait. I'm waiting sooooo long, even with different settings. I don't know what non-community players like for settings,
so I tried almost every option but imo with the game speeds there's too many options.

Don't take my criticism too heavy though, I rarely play. Although that's why it's quite disappointing no one joins my lobby once I finally find some time.

[Krom]

I'm not sure I understand this rant: you (also some members of R.A. I talked with) say there are no x1 games any more, no one plays them. You also imply that just everyone else plays at x2 or so. You say you wait for hours for just anyone to join your lobby to play at x1. Does that mean that everyone is happy with x2 but just a few Pro players?

I also doubt that PT numbers can be compared like so, x1 PT60 and x2 PT75 are not quite the same. Player reactions take time and I guess we can safely cut ~10% of virtual game time to that.

[Krom]

Another note: not everyone is so devoted to playing to have an army at 60min at x1. Not everyone is free enough to take 60+20 min on a single session either. Thats where the compromise is born - they take 80min and slice them in half to 40min. Then now do have an army at 40min - everyones happy )

@Tom: Why dont you just join someones lobby and see the settings and maybe even stay to play?

[Bence791]

My opinion is still that the speed slider should be removed Or at least reduced to x1-x2, x0,2 steps.

Krom, the main problem is that randoms don't care about anyone. I have told them at least 3 times (I mean, each random guy demanding higher speed or more pt), that it is kinda bullshit to play different settings than x1 60 minutes pt. And they continue demanding that stuff, start insulting, and I get fed up with it and kick. Then half of my lobby leaves. Tss... After 20 minutes of waiting, that doesn't feel good, right? Now, if it is all like this, why would any of us even try to play with them? This change separated the TS players+the some of randoms that actually play the good setup when we set it and the others that are such... Well, you know.

Does that mean that everyone is happy with x2 but just a few Pro players?

Not a few, but all pro players. And yes,

we can safely cut ~10% of virtual game time to that.

BUT. Does that 10% worth it so much to lose all the fun? For me it doesn't

[dicsoupcan]

Well the problem of the speed slider is that people cannot be mature about it, they demand a speed and insult hosts who play a different speed. this results in either emptying lobbies or people who decide to ''teach the host a lesson'', stay in the lobby unill the game starts only to leave it.

Then there are players who cannot handle a larger speed, having their towns die because of mistakes and leave.

Kam was always a slow paced game, and i know there were many requests for a higher gamespeed. that is alright, but i think the speed cap of 3x is too high at the moment.

oh and anti, you might want to try choosing cursed ravine, players will come to that map like bees come to honey.

[pawel95]

I'm not sure I understand this rant: you (also some members of R.A. I talked with) say there are no x1 games any more, no one plays them. You also imply that just everyone else plays at x2 or so. You say you wait for hours for just anyone to join your lobby to play at x1. Does that mean that everyone is happy with x2 but just a few Pro players?

First its not a "few" Krom and in my eyes its wrong to call us Pro players. Let´s call us "players that played the original game (tsk/tpr). I am not sure with who you have talked about, R.A has like +50 members so I can´t tell you what they think about. However I can tell you that the fact is just easy: The standard game time changed from 1,0 to over 2,0. It´s not about liking or not, because the "new players/kids" maybe likes it, ok no problem. However its also fact that most of new players,that joined in the current releaser, never played 1,0 and won´t understan it how "it was done originaly". On the other side you are talking about

for just anyone to join your lobby to play at x1

. Well its not that we only want to play 1,0 we are also humans and do compromises. However there is a wave of joining/leaving players because they want to start fast as possibl, they are not happy with 1,5 THEY don´t go for compromises and are insulting the host to be not professional becase they only play >2,0.

Another note: not everyone is so devoted to playing to have an army at 60min at x1. Not everyone is free enough to take 60+20 min on a single session either. Thats where the compromise is born - they take 80min and slice them in half to 40min.

That works only in theory Krom. When someone has no army at 60 min PT x1 thats no probem. I can understand it completly. They are playing 80 min with 2,0 min PT have still same amount of army(nearly) because you cant do the same job at that speed, you could do at 1,0 and I have to disagree a bit with you krom. Splitting up with 2,0 speed so you have only 40 min in pt(real time) may look fantastic. However many new players don´t plan completly. They think: "oh i will make my army, will rush the enemy and will then go to school/job". When the game won´t run like they thought, they just leave the game AND THEN all other players in that game lost their time, the strangest thing is, these guys who hadn´t time for 1,0-1,5 speed and spam the chat in lobby wih "go host, go!" will rehost and play one more game with x2,5, which in my eyes doesn´t make sense completly.

@Tom: Why dont you just join someones lobby and see the settings and maybe even stay to play?

Maybe it´s not nice to answer questions that don´t belong to me, sorry for that But I think I answered it already. Propbly Tom wants to have a relaxed normal game, like the original game just worked. So when noone wants to play ONE time 1,5 in his lobby, why he should play then with 2,0 speed.

At this topic there are that many funny things, like they increase the pt to have more army but with the high speed they still have the same. Also one thing I saw is that these players don´t want to understand that its a way bigger chance to fail. I had some games with Sado where we just started with 2,0 speed and then one player left. Why? He ran out of stone REHOST (10 min lost). the next game was ok. One more and we played 20 min where one guy forgot to make gold in time and i understand that because they spam serfs an workers at school but forget that the gold is 2times faster empty than normaly. And here we are back at the start...

Another note: not everyone is so devoted to playing to have an army at 60min at x1. Not everyone is free enough to take 60+20 min on a single session either. Thats where the compromise is born - they take 80min and slice them in half to 40min.

...that´s ok. But why mostly players rehost 2 times and loose like 10-20 min per rehost, when they coul play a 60 min pt 1,0 OR(when they have only 40 min) to play a 40 min PT game at a map with towers for example. They will loose more time wih making mistakes in their economy or even will miscalculate more with time and just leave, than they would loose at normal speed /low pt game.

I wanted to add one more thing that is funny, that i forgot: In like 2/5 games I tested/played with >1,5 speed everyone of these "fast/new players" were happy. They only realised like after 20 min that 2 players have like 8 fps because their computer isnt that fast for that speed, so we played like let´s say 0,75x speed noone said that it was too slow, they were just happy that we set it like that in the lobby

? This change separated the TS players+the some of randoms that actually play the good setup when we set it and the others that are such... Well, you know.

Forgot about that valid point Idd. Like I described now enough times, I often played games with random guys, I didn´t care that much about skills, more about leavers but nvm But this seperation of "old kam players(that played tsk/tpr) and new) is really bad (Bence I don´t like TS guys, because I know enough players, that played tsk even online but never joined ts before, they don´t like this change also(mostly from deadly german forum)

oh and anti, you might want to try choosing cursed ravine, players will come to that map like bees come to honey.

Tried it with that disco and also with same rocks. When they see x1,0 or x1,5 they all leave and open an other lobby with same map but x2,5

[Krom]

Krom, the main problem is that randoms don't care about anyone. I have told them at least 3 times (I mean, each random guy demanding higher speed or more pt), that it is kinda bullshit to play different settings than x1 60 minutes pt. And they continue demanding that stuff, start insulting, and I get fed up with it and kick. Then half of my lobby leaves. Tss... After 20 minutes of waiting, that doesn't feel good, right? Now, if it is all like this, why would any of us even try to play with them? This change separated the TS players+the some of randoms that actually play the good setup when we set it and the others that are such... Well, you know.

Does that mean that everyone is happy with x2 but just a few Pro players?

Not a few, but all pro players. And yes,

So why not all these Pro players play together at x1 and let others play at x2, I don't understand ..

we can safely cut ~10% of virtual game time to that.

BUT. Does that 10% worth it so much to lose all the fun? For me it doesn't

Definition of "fun" is quite subjective.

[Krom]

Well the problem of the speed slider is that people cannot be mature about it, they demand a speed and insult hosts who play a different speed. this results in either emptying lobbies or people who decide to ''teach the host a lesson'', stay in the lobby unill the game starts only to leave it.

Then there are players who cannot handle a larger speed, having their towns die because of mistakes and leave.

Kam was always a slow paced game, and i know there were many requests for a higher gamespeed. that is alright, but i think the speed cap of 3x is too high at the moment.

oh and anti, you might want to try choosing cursed ravine, players will come to that map like bees come to honey.

The problem of people immaturity and demandness is hardly caused by the slider
Players can always make mistakes at any speed. There were examples below, someone missed stone, someone missed gold. RTS genre is about planning well in advance to collect the fruits after a time, so no wonder weak players make fatal mistakes. I doubt speed is THAT much responsible for mediocre strategics talents

Sadly we don't have stats about number of games played at each speed, but it makes me think, from your guys words, that average speed nowadays is x2.25, do you agree to that?

[dicsoupcan]

Well most games are at 2 or 2,5 times speed. and then you have a few 3x speed games, so 2.25x speed might not even be a bad guess on average.

[Ben]

I think that the speed increase slider is a great addition. I hate it very much in my opinion, though. It's ruined all the challenge in random games. I believe it is a great addition because all these randoms enjoy this brainless gameplay.
HOWEVER
There are already way too many options in the lobby. I can settle for 2.5 gamespeed. Sucks, but I'll manage. Or, I'll manage The Same Rocks and 1.5 gamespeed. What I can't tolerate is 2.5 speed and some map Center castle, for example. Two brainless combination put together is ridiculous. You can reverse this logic for the random (I'll play Golden Cliffs, but not 1.5 speed).

Personally, I think that if we had 1x , 1.5x, and 2x would be enough. 2.5x and 3x are excessive.

If you ask what I want, then I say 1x, 1.25x, and 2x. But what I want is a moot point

[Killer!!]

i think that it should be bad for the game to deleat the speed slider i mean for the TS and some clans it will be better but I think that the most of the random guys will hate our ideas
So i think that they will play less KaM or stop playing it because it will be "to slow" for them XD
so I think it isnt a good idea to set it back.
(srry again for my englisch)

[Bence791]

So why not all these Pro players play together at x1 and let others play at x2, I don't understand ..

Definition of "fun" is quite subjective.

1, Because it is pretty hard to organise games when we aren't that many, and there was not a day when there were 2 full "TS lobbies" running simultaneously (it has been the case for the last 6-7 months). And I'D LIKE TO play with them, but these ridiculous setups make me think otherwise... I guess others are of the same opinion.

2, I meant that now they don't make any troops in peacetime. Well, sometimes we played "knight rushes", it's about making as many knights as you can and some militia to empty towers, and crush the enemy right after pt's end. But it isn't fun to fight against defenceless cities, is it? That's what I meant with "lose all the fun". Back in the day, even if they couldn't actually "compete" against us, we could have nice games with them. Nowadays it is just a waste of time, and as I wrote above, there isn't always a choice to play with TS players. Sometimes everyone's too lazy, sometimes there are not enough players, sometimes it is too late etc. Lately I wasn't playing because the processor in my PC is gone, but whatever. I meant the times when I did.

Probably we are just too far ahead of them... Dunno :S