Review of the new "King?"

Feedback/Suggestions
#1

Alright, I just made my forum account - however I made it specifically to wonder what happened with the shift of balance in the game. Personally, after the changes in the previous patch before the current one I believe the game was in a fine state. All roles, for the majority - felt impactful.

However, today the King has to be one of the most useless classes in the game for such a major role. I don’t get the reasoning for taking away the king’s investigative abilities if they’re one of the roles that players who are siding with the BD are meant to look up to and side with.

Right now, the king is at the mercy of every single role in the game and can’t figure out anything for himself unless someone has royal blood (which is a small chance). Therefore, the king will have no leads himself to guide his kingdom to victory. Instead, the king must bow down to the whispers game and use his gut to figure out who’s lying, which makes no real sense at all to me. How does the king know who he can trust and listen to if he can’t even identify who’s who? This change seems very messy and disrupts the games balance because the king relies too much on investigative roles than he can’t even tell are on his own side.

“Allies” is not even used to find “Allies” at this point, and I think that the changes to the King NEED to be reverted.It’s too hard to tell who you can trust with all the conversions going on in the game, the introduction of new neutral classes, and different people all whispering you different things that you can’t even tell yourself are true because you have no idea how to figure that out. This is terrible for such a major role, because the King is expected to give the court leads.

TLDR: Please revert the changes to the King. He’s lost his identity and his role now is completely useless, depending too much on the player’s gut rather than their game knowledge. You have no investigative abilities as a “leader” role, and are dependent on your own intuition to trust someone else’s claim through whispers. Finding someone with Royal Blood doesn’t even matter now considering they can be converted and keep this passive.

2 Likes
#2

Agree wholeheartedly. I feel that the changes to king are entirely unwarranted and not backed up by any sort of data on balance and whatnot. According to the developers themselves, faction winrates were within 5% of each other last patch; THIS IS AN EXCELLENT BALANCE SPREAD. There was no need to make such massive changes and effectively make one of the most interesting and dynamic roles in the game near useless.

“Check” was a powerful ability for sure, but that’s not justification for its removal. I mean he’s the king, he SHOULD be powerful, and the pre-patch King was excellent balance-wise and flavor-wise.

The game post-patch has been way less fun in my experience, and I suspect this is partially because the game lacks the leadership and direction of a central investigative figure whose allegiances are unknown (aka, the KING). The games have also been much slower and more samey.

1 Like
#3

I think the idea that the King is meant to be the leader of his faction, and as such, the most powerful member of his faction isn’t necessarily true. The King should be used as a medium to transfer ideas to the public, which investigators use to convey their findings. The new Royal Blood ability stays true to what a King would be capable of finding out on his own: who the members of his family are. The new ability might need a rework to assure the gameplay experience isn’t boring, but I don’t think it is a move in the wrong direction for the King’s overall kit.

1 Like
#4

King isn’t supposed to be an investigator

5 Likes
#5

If I flip a coin, there is a 50/50 chance of winning. This is the most even win rate you can get. But the game is bad.

The king is not supposed to be relied upon for information, especially not as a better investigator than the actual detectives.

Games rely too heavily on king and make the game terrible. I am tired of playing king, especially evil and neutral.

1 Like
#6

I like the idea of whispers to the King being hidden and the royal check, but we’ll see how it pans out.

#7

They also talked about swing… and with swing I mean "If King is evil BD loses 90% of the time, if neutral, 45% of the time, if good 20% of the time.
That. Is NOT fun. And I know that the King made a difference that was horribly high in all my games with a king with allies.

#8

What if we changed Allies to a parity cop check between two players at night? It would tell you whether two people were of the same faction or not. This could be powerful but also not entirely damning a single person to death. It would provoke discussion and have the two players “duel” in a way to convince the King that the other person is the scum. Make it so you can’t check the same person twice, so you can’t simply find the Prince and pair everybody up with him.

The 1.10 patch King can be useful at times - he can verify Princess and Drunk claims. A lot of scum like to claim Princess so this is a decent enough investigation tool.

Why not? Pretty sure he isn’t supposed to be execution fodder, either.

The nature of the King spawning will always be swing-y. There is nothing you can do about that unless you allow the King to decide his faction during the middle of the game. Until then, some games will be easier or harder for scum depending on the King spawn.

"Allies" ability suggestion
#9

Yes. And that is exactly why King should be not so powerful that their presence decides the vast majority of the games

1 Like
#10

If the King isn’t powerful or useful enough, there is no reason not to hang him when he can be a detriment to BD.

There is a fine balancing act here. You can’t make him useless unless you’re okay with auto King lynches like in Alpha.

#11

Correct, and 2 or … even … grumble… 3 uses of Allies should be enough. Not 4, please.

#12

I think king needs a higher chance of BD, or a 100% chance of BD.

#13

Or we could replace allies with a social ability.

#14

How about 50BD/30Neut/20Evil?

#15

it needs to be around the same as everybody else’s chance at d2