Well. Gunbound has many many flaws right now. These flaws are NOT observations based on personal opinion, they are easy to observe for anyone.
The fundamental flaws of gunbound:
1. Avatar on was taken over by splash damage mobiles, experienced players do not play avatar on anymore.
2. Bug with Raon mobile: mines do not target properly
3. Bug with Ice mobile: SS does not drop the correct amount of defense
4. Ranking system: Softnyx allows people to bot. The gold, GP, etc that has been earned by cheating is not being removed, and bans are not permanent. The ranking system has lost all meaning.
5. Horrible customer service: players are like cattle that you only feed when you feel there is a danger of them running away. "The gunbound GM" and "The GIS team" are faceless, intangible entities, cold and machine-like.
6. Inadequate buddy system and chatting system: Cannot order buddies, cannot make buddy groups, cannot appear as offline, cannot turn off buddy invites, cannot have private rooms. Messages pop up and cannot be minimized, only dragged off screen.
7. Inadequate server load: Heaps of half-full avatar on servers, two full avatar off servers. No rank limitation above double metal axe.
8. Room listing bugs: self explanatory
9. Lack of fundamental anti-hack programming techniques
10. Extremely bad handling of lag: Game freezes up for no reason, it is very inefficient and relies solely on the users' connection's reliability.
That's about all I can think of right now. Add more if you want, but keep in mind, no "a sate is too powerful" "boomer is whores" "People shouldn't be allowed to kick" etc... Only point out things that are so obvious that you can't believe they haven't done something about them yet.
Half of the items coming out now are cash only. I know that its a free game blah blah, but I think they cost to much.
A majority of the time, servers 7-10 are near empty. Servers 11 and 12 are almost always full as well as the newbie servers and server 5.
Better wording: Avatar On servers are mostly empty. The 4 avatar off servers (newbie and non) are almost always full or close to full.
kiwi:
Quote3. Bug with Ice mobile: SS does not drop the correct amount of defense
and it requires a perfect hit to register. it's sort of like a crappy version of shot two. :P
Quote5. Horrible customer service: players are like cattle that you only feed when you feel there is a danger of them running away. "The gunbound GM" and "The GIS team" are faceless, intangible entities, cold and machine-like.
that seems a little disrespectful to dovo. he doesn't HAVE to spend time here, does he? and in softnyx' defense, seemingly all their people have horrendous english skills, so they are very limited in their interaction with the GB world system. but really, that's no reason not to create some liaisons with the some portion of the fan community, is it? to have people on your staff perhaps be volunteers for softnyx and get both perks and responsibilities?
Quote6. Inadequate buddy system and chatting system: Cannot order buddies, cannot make buddy groups, cannot appear as offline, cannot turn off buddy invites, cannot have private rooms. Messages pop up and cannot be minimized, only dragged off screen.
and the simple bug of windows not 'focusing' properly. when you open an IM window with someone the cursor-text focus should switch their instead of your having to click it a second time with the mouse.
Quote9. Lack of fundamental anti-hack programming techniques
i thought this was a huge and on-going effort on their part??
Quote10. Extremely bad handling of lag: Game freezes up for no reason, it is very inefficient and relies solely on the users' connection's reliability.
the only time it freezes up on me now (dating back a couple weeks) is when someone actually quits. otherwise it has something i call 'mini-lag' because you can see the system struggling to regain control and can rely on it to start working again shortly.
----------
near-bug: the nak's problem with 'jagged pixels'. arguably it's something the player should have to account for, but we shouldn't have to carry around magnifying glasses to check this.
I wonder why they don't hire english speaking moderators, since it's an international service and English is more international than Korean :o
QuoteQuote9. Lack of fundamental anti-hack programming techniques
i thought this was a huge and on-going effort on their part??
nProtect is a kludge. Any serious programmer will tell you this. It would be functionally worthless had they coded the program intelligently in the first place, and frankly as it stands right now it's practically nonexistent for anyone who knows what they're doing.
Now onto problems...
- Is it too much to ask for Trico to shoot the same way both ways? (Although, knowing them they'd make it like right shooting for both directions.)
- Boomer can still sometimes backshot itself for no bloody good reason at bizarre angles, such as 40. (Why haven't they fixed this yet?! I am picturing some labyrinthe mess of code underlying the Boomer mechanics that they refuse to touch with anything short of voodoo.)
- A failure to give an incentive to players of like skill to play together, enabling only teamstacking and noob bashing as the only ways throughout the ranks with any notable speed, outside of botting anyway.
- A lack of a simple practice system of any sort. How hard could it be to allow single player Jewel? :P
- A lack of a proper trading window, making the 'economy', such as it is, prone to exploitation by dickheads, and inherently untrustworthy.
- Avatar values are out of whack; even if Avatar On was no longer populated by those who use the no-defense splash damage to win with, there is still the problem of there being clear winners as far as equipment goes in the late game, made only worse by the addition of cash-only equipment.
- (Edit, can't believe I forgot this) Some map spawns are inherently out of whack from a balance perspective. Stardust cramming everyone into a two inch square. Any spawns on the lower lumps in Nirvana B. The middle spawns in Metropolis. The middle spawns in Cozy Tower. The list goes on and on...
Beyond that, I have a whole laundry list of complaints about the fundamental flaws of the game, but most of them fall under the category of "It's not their fault that their players are fucking morons, but it is that they're encouraging it." So I'll keep my trap shut.
QuoteI wonder why they don't hire english speaking moderators, since it's an international service and English is more international than Korean :o
mONEY constraints? tight budget? or maybe they are just plain stingy :ph34r:
What. Hiring an english teacher isn't that expensive.
QuoteWhat. Hiring an english teacher isn't that expensive.
Not if you hire em for a monthly basis..
Why don't they just get people to voluenteer to be GM that can actually SPEAK ENGLISH? I'm sure people would do it, but then again, GB is filled up with compleate dick heads and then a dick head could become a GM and yeah...
One thing that jerks me the most is the amount of botters in this game, and the fact that softnyx is not doing one god damn thing about them. I don't know how many time I have just wanted to start botting because softnyx is not doing a damn thing about them. only reason I never started botting is because I like to earn my rank, work for it, not have some stupid little program do the gp gaining for me.
agree with most of these...
1. Splash damage on avatar on: I always kind of liked this because it makes up for cake and lightning's weaknesses in avatar off. To be more fair though, cake and lightning should be competitively strong in avatar off, and get normal damage reduction from their shot's damage in avatar on.
2. This is especially stupid because it used to work properly so they did something that broke it. They could have simply left it alone.
5. I wouldn't say cold and machinelike. You just cannot talk personally to thousands and thousands of people who write in, you HAVE to use automatic forms to reply to customer service issues. Also they are not responding in their native language, so maybe their word choice is altered by that... hard to use casual speech and slang for non-native speakers. Anyhow, I don't think there's anything wrong with the customer service. They removed the stupid "4 clicks before you can report" and made it just 1 click to report bugs, hacking stuff, etc. To me, that is the most you can ask for for free. Also I have heard a lot of people who ran into problems and were able to get items or gold or rank restored promptly. I think the average gunbound player doesn't have a sense of just how many issues they must deal with every day. There are somewhere over 1 million registered users, if even 1/100th of those are still active, that is a MASSIVE number of complaints, bug reports, fix requests, etc. to go through.
6. Eh, I'd be happy with a do-not-disturb mode. The rest you don't really need to play the game or find friends, clicking the friends button and right clicking rooms is enough. I DO think the change-ID thing was a big fuckup, they should have made it so that if you had the person in your buddy list, you would be allowed to see their old nickname automatically. I am tired of having to ask people to remind me who they are.
10. To me this should be number one. It seems like if your shot information is lost, the game decides to kick you out and basically give the enemy a chance for an easy win... rather than just try to send the shot information a 2nd time to whoever didn't see it yet.
Other stuff: hire english speakers - not unless you're going to charge money. This game was made first and foremost by koreans for koreans, and any accomodations they make for other languages is a FAVOR, not a RIGHT... I'm just happy for what english there is, people make fun of it but I have no trouble figuring out what I read on the website or in the game.
People being GMS for free is a GREAT idea. Softnyx can just give the GM rank to a hundred or so people and make it easy for them, a simple report function like /report [userID] [offense]. I would be willing to sit in channels 1, 2, and 3 all day and report hack site spammers in return for free avatar or whatever. To prevent abuse they can only pick people who they trust. I know many of them actually play the game and have buddies. Maybe they could offer GMs to people who consistently report real hacking problems and scam sites through the web page.
Mauve:
I Disagree with a lot :(
-trico is challenging on purpose, I don't see any point in taking away part of what makes him interesting and appealing. I think having to learn two different sides makes keeps trico interesting for a longer amount of time...
-More or less the same thing can be said about boomer, boomer's goofy physics are what make him a fair and interesting bot (and even then he's so strong)... obviously nothing about him is realistic, so I hope you're not arguing that it should be changed for realism's sake. Anyway, here's how a new (or experienced) player could avoid accidental backshots for all of eternity:
1. Put "boomer guide gunbound" into google.
2. Find their way to my (shameless plug) guides page, it's the third result.
3. Read the section on backshots and learn that angles below 37 are safe.
4. Assuming they trust my info, they should never accidentally backshot again.
-While I'm immediately distrustful of anyone who says "Stacking" with a straight face, I would agree that some mathematical system would make sense, whereby beating up someone 13 ranks lower than you earns much fewer GP than beating up e.g. a dragon.
- To 'fix' this pretty much means making the game more boring. Some slight variations in 'fairness' keep things spicy, in just about any video games with maps. It's not like spawning in the middle of cozytower = unwinnable game. In the long run, if you play more than that single unfair game, you will get the nice spawns and it all balances out. Some maps obviously just need to be tossed out the window, like nirvana B and probably metamine B.
eh, I actually like Niravana B, but that map is more for messing around for me not to actually try to win there. As for Metamin B I agree, that map blows, and needs to gtfo.
How does making Trico not suck in melee half the time make it somehow less interesting? Out of the last ten games I've played in most of them I spawned to the left of my enemy in melee. This is not a fight one can expect to win against a power mobile, such as Armor, if he plays intelligently. At all. How does necessitating that I carry a teleport just so I can have a reasonable expectation of fighting someone in a fashion that doesn't involve shotgunning add to the game? In fact it's a complete waste of my time to try. I don't care about range - In fact removing the right shooting quirks makes it actually harder to shoot at range, since the left-shooting stuff is generally full of trickier shots once you're beyond melee range.
I don't see how having a mobile that can smash itself to pieces accidentally by simply not knowing that an angle above some absurdly low value can sometimes do that for no goddamned reason whatsoever adds to gameplay, skill, or anything other than another bit of nearly useless trivia you have to know to play the game reasonably well. I do not know about you, but I am not a fan of that sort of gameplay and what it implies. (Edit: On a side note, I actually watched a Boomer backshot underneath itself with an angle of around -5 the other day.)
We've had the argument on stacking before, I believe. Anyone who knows me knows that I've never tolerated it. You might disagree, but just one look at any of the power user rooms out there will tell you that it is a major problem and it is widespread and it is hurting this game and diluting the rank system significantly, and the game is in dire need of incentives to reduce reliance on it to rank up. (My favorite so far was seeing a blue wand with a 90% win rate who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn when not on Meta Mine.)
And, explain to me how having three of your teammates spawning in the exact same location adds to the flavor of the game? Especially if Thor's up. And your team doesn't go first. This problem exists on more than one map in the game. And some maps just simply give too much of an advantage in certain situations. I have seen more than one one-turn bunge on Metro's lower spawns. I do not mind positions that are advantageous and disadvantageous in various fashions, in fact I think it does add quite a bit to the game since I am a proponent of 'different, yet equal' that is so lacking in many games, but, frankly, some are just plain stupid from a game balance standpoint and need to be fixed. And yes, Meta B and Nirvana B need to go out the window.
I do believe most of this is simply a matter of miscommunication and misunderstanding, rather than an actual disagreement of viewpoints.
They need better sorting methods when searching for a game. For example, show only 1v1, 2v2, etc. or show only solo, tag, etc.
Dont forget their announcement typos!
QuoteDont forget their announcement typos!
That's about all I can think of right now. Add more if you want, but
keep in mind, no "a sate is too powerful" "boomer is whores" "People shouldn't be allowed to kick" etc... Only point out things that are so obvious that you can't believe they haven't done something about them yet. :>
Since just recently, gunbound hangs up every few seconds for hangups lasting a few seconds. Usually it ends up in a complete computer fuckup lasting for the next few reboots.
There is no reason for a game to become inherently unusable for lower-end computers for absofuckinglutely no advance in gameplay or flashiness.
Strike *thinks* twenty, Softnyx.
*reinstalls gunbound*
[buttkissing mode]btw, huge thanks to kiwi, mauvecow and creedo for making a hugely interesting thread.[/buttkissingmode]
dont forget gb's random crashes -_-
They need to fix the lag system. Whenever someone lags, the game goes:
"HOST and THISGUYLAGS will be kicked in 30 seconds"
Then the game sits there in lag for about ten minutes, not kicking the guy.
Mauve: that one situation, right shooting melee, is sucky for trico, ok... but you can look at it as "this sucks because trico's shots are different" or you can look at it as "this sucks because I spawned in melee range with no angle". In the latter case, a lot of matchups are bullshit - raon in a shotgunning mines position vs grub, grub lost due to the spawn. A sate goes first vs boomer from can't-miss range, boomer lost due to the spawn. Nak vs. cake up close, nak is probably going to win even if cake valiantly works to hole you. Why should trico get special consideration for being fucked at melee range half the time vs strong mobiles when others are fucked 100% of the time at the same range vs the same mobiles?
re: boomer's backshot - first, it doesn't happen for no reason at all, it happens because the designers want a difficult to handle, strangely moving projectile for that particular bot, and they came up a set of faked physics to do that, and after tweaking those physics for a bit they said "ok this is what we're looking for, good enough." They aren't going to test every single angle and power just to fish for a specific plausible backshot angle. These are boomerangs for christ's sake, in cartoons and movies and the legend of zelda you throw them at *0* degrees and they magically fly straight back to you. This is undoubtedly something softnyx had in mind when they made a character called "boomer" who fires BOOMERANGS.
Anyway, what I was trying to say is: The fact that the minimum gunbound backshot angle is 37 vs 47 vs 67 is meaningless... it's like complaining that nak's heavy shot weight sucks because you have to use over 1 bar in melee to avoid hitting yourself in melee situations with 26 wind against. Using more power for nak doesn't suck, it's just a requirement for playing nak in some occasional wind situations. Using angle 36 or less for boomer doesn't suck, it's just a requirement for playing boomer in some occasional wind situations.
it is a major problem and it is widespread and it is hurting this game and diluting the rank system significantly, and the game is in dire need of incentives to reduce reliance on it to rank up. (My favorite so far was seeing a blue wand with a 90% win rate who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn when not on Meta Mine.)
Are you that naive dude? Teamstacking has NOTHING TO DO with the situations you're describing. This is due to BOTTING. 90% win rate blue wand who misses = BOTTER. Diluted, unfair ranks = result of BOTTING. It doesn't happen because legitimately skilled high rank players bully chickens in slowass 4v4 games for about 25 GP an hour, it happens because unskilled players bully suicidal bots in quick 1v1 games for about 150 GP an hour. Do you see the game losing popularity because chickens can't find other chickens to play? I don't see that. In fact, if these blue wands are just beating up chickens and can't hit the broad side of a barn, then the matchups between wands and lower ranks are MUCH more fair than you portray them to be.
I do believe most of this is simply a matter of miscommunication and misunderstanding, rather than an actual disagreement of viewpoints.
I don't think we'll ever resolve teamstacking. I just don't see anything wrong, under any conditions, with a team full of high ranked, skilled players playing vs low rankers. Nobody, absolutely nobody, is putting a gun to the head of low rankers, and if they don't know what they're getting into, they should notice the "play vs wand = get a beating" pattern after maybe 5 games tops and resolve to play lower ranks if they can't tolerate losing games in the course of the typical gunbound learning process.
About the spawns, it sucks when 3 teammates LITERALLY spawn on each other, but that happens about ... I'd say 1/10 times on 2/12 maps, and it happens half the time to you and half the time to the enemy. That's what, 8 out of 1000 games? With the understanding that you will also have the chance to inflict triple damage on the enemy 8/1000 games?
Honestly, the chance to hit 2 or 3 people right from the spawn DOES add the fun of the game ...I would rather suffer through it occasionally than have it removed from the game completely and never have the chance to try for DKs (save for the kind that an enemy stupidly manufactures for me).
I don't understand why you must look at everything from the martyred victim viewpoint man... some of the most fun games I've ever played are unbalanced or unfair in some respect, in fact many of them are fun BECAUSE they're unbalanced. As an example, you could look at the growth of quake... first game had cheap bullshit and unfair spawns. Later versions removed some of the movement, toned down some of the damage from 'unfair' weapons, etc etc. What do the fans do? Complain that it's unfun and make a patch to bring the game back to its former cheapass-gameplay glory. The patch I'm referring to is more popular than the original game. A less accurate example might be the fighting game genre... the most fair and balanced fighting game I know of, with perfectly even, flat, identical fighting arenas is virtua fighter 4. Yet the game's performance in arcade falls somewhere between a broken frogger machine and mario golf. Meanwhile tremendously unfair games from capcom and namco are enormously popular.
The reason I call this example inaccurate is because in japan, the VF series rules the roost... so I guess some people just have a mindset that more balance = more fun, and others just don't have that mentality. That's my halfassed explanation as to why we won't ever agree on this.
i dont think team stacking happens on purpose at all times. im a ruby wand now and all my friends are around wands. and when we play together it seems like we're stacking. but we are all friends. We dont purposely pick on others, sometimes we fight high rankers but now these days, the metal axe are the ones owning everyone.
some comments earlier in the thread made me think of one more 'bug' issue that impacts a great many things... first and foremost starting financially for softnyx, but having a lot of secondary consequences. this is not a bug per se, but here goes:
as far as i can tell softynx has chosen a rather bizarre target audience with the game of gunbound. altho the game they've created is deeply rich and nuanced with tactics, strategy, and a deep ruleset making it distinctive and unique from worms or anything else, the GRAPHICS SCHEME they have chosen is kiddie-light in the extreme. the first thing i thought when i started playing this game is "why am i being represented by a little mop-haired tyke with a perpetually angry expression? i'm a grown man, dammit." this made me feel a little embarrassed and i've since tried to build avatar sets that restore a little self-dignity, yet the kiddie-style, anime graphics are inescapable. naturally the game itself is wonderful so this doesn't bother me all that much... but it gives food for thought in terms of what type of players would be attracted by the graphics. there is NO QUESTION that everything is richly and wonderfully animated, for example the bot facial expressions and the weapons effects, and that adds a great deal of charm to the experience. the work the artists have put into this game is damn hard to overlook. so my problem is not with their professionalism but with their direction chosen.
and it seems to me that their target has been successfully achieved- the game is indeed played primarily by twelve-year olds, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. OTOH, the richness of the game (it's not far from being chess-like) cries out for a somewhat more mature audience. the money they are hoping to reap probably best comes from adults as much as it does kids. for one thing, kids just have to beg their parents permission to use their credit cards- many adults will have those cards on their own. and just as you can design avatar sets that will look appealling to the eye of a twelve-year old, i imagine you could design one that a 19-year old will want to buy. (more could be said on the graphics subject but i think my point's made)
anyway, the consequences of having a young target audience might well lead to two big problems: LESS MONEY earned by softnyx and greater problems with consciousless SCRIPT-KIDDIES (altho there might be just as many older people with just as little scruples). having less money means less quality put into the coding, the security, and the bug fixes, such as the perpetual lag and freezing.
so what would i consider? totally making over the graphics. instead of depicting kids, depict men and women. instead of everyone having an angry expression on their face, have some range of mood. instead of shooting for cutesy avatars, go for a more artsy approach. by doing things like this you could target a more mature game-playing audience, yet plenty of kids would want to play it. it would be just more of an 'all-ages game' in terms of reputation and look and character. this would have a lot of consequences i think for many of the issues with GB, as well as specifically a lot of the bugs already mentioned here (for example they would hopefully have more and better-quality staff to look into these bugs)
okay, that was the thought. it's just a thought, so don't rape too hard please. =)
Hmmm I read your post ProfessorPap and I started thinking--wow someone is complaining about the graphics!? How ungrateful! But when I really think about it-- you're actually probably very right. I think a different direction with the artistic scheme would alter the game maturity level/population. Interesting...
Anyway, on a different note, my biggest problems with the game have already been mentioned but I can add a few:
1. Un-use of certain things.
For example, there is supposed to be a weather effect for causing more ground damage-- it's always a zero though...why don't they just make it already? Another example: Rankings say 40000/40000 instead of what you are out of the amount of players that exist. Another One: They are supposed to have seasonal rankings...but they don't ever change seasons...I think.
2. Game Improvent Focus.
The only way they seem to be changing the game is through patches and new avatars and the occasional contest. They never add new mobiles--Imagine the possibilities, they never add new items--this I cannot believe...it's so simple to do and it's easy to come up with new ideas. They never fix certain spelling errors, like "Leon Launcher".
That's all I can think of for now. These are just ways I think the game could be even better--not complaints.
a trade system, as said already, is the most obvious thing ppl expect from gb. It's been awaited since I started playing (beginningof 2004), and I believe it's beeen awaited before that.
It's sooooo simple, check ragnarok trade. Both players drag the item to the trade window, so each one can see what they are getting. After checking if the trade is what you want really, you click "ok". If the guy also clicks "ok", he can't unclick it anymore, so all that's left is both to click "trade". Then, when both click it, the trade is done. Simple as that. If the guy tries to cheat you and removes the item before clicking ok, you can still notice it and click cancel, instead of trade. Never seen nobody abuse it, it's great.
Now about ice and raon bugs...........sometimes I start thinking if that way the are acting is not the way softnyx wants........you see, such and easy problem to solve, and still it remains for monthsssssssss.....really dissapointing :/
As much as everyone wants the trase system, I sitll have to say, if they added it its going to be a hackers paradise. Softnyx is going to fuck it up royally.