Recent posts by BenV on Kongregate

Topic: Kongregate / Kongai: Pirate set release date?

I must have misunderstood you then, I apologize!

Topic: Kongregate / Kongai: Pirate set release date?

Zakia, I really don’t see where I come into this discussion at all. Letting people play with random cards before picking their starter cards is in fact a simple change, but if the designers don’t want me to implement it, I can’t just go in and do it now can I? The reason Kongai took so long is not because of the fact that it is some marvel of engineering, it is quite simply that we didn’t have enough time to work on it. The original 6 month estimate was just a figure grabbed out of thin air, and was never realistic. Now consider the fact that Kongregate only has a few programmers who have to divide their time between Kongai, site features, site performance, facebook, troubleshooting, server migration, etc.

If you think you could do my job, you’re welcome to apply for it. We have an opening.

Topic: Kongregate / % to get cards after update

The lowest % chance has been increased significantly from 3% as well.

Topic: Kongregate / Kongai 1.1

We are currently focused on fixing performance/disconnect issues. Quite a few have already been tracked down and will be resolved for the next release. After the stability issues are fixed we will begin taking a look at feature requests once again.

Phantom: There have been quite a few admin posts in this forum ;)

Topic: Kongregate / What happens if Kongai wins the monthly contest?

Last Stand 2 to the rescue!

Topic: Kongregate / Kongai 1.1

A tie is calculated into the system based on who “should have won” and who “should have lost” based on your skill rank. For example, if you are skill rank 1, and tie against a skill rank 15 player, you will gain some points and they will lose some points (but not as many as if it were a win). The number of points won/lost decreases depending on how close your skill ratings were. If they are exactly the same, then neither of your ratings would change.

Ties to not count toward your win/loss record, and there is actually a “Ties” statistic which isn’t exposed anywhere.

To everyone upset with the timer issue, thanks for your input, we will be reevaluating this change, and hopefully we can find something that works well for most players.

Topic: Kongregate / Why do disconnects count as a loss in Kongai?

Unfortunately it is so easy to fake a “disconnect” (by closing the browser) that they need to count as a loss to deter people from doing that.

Topic: Kongregate / The Kongai card earning system is completely screwed up

Laxaria: The minimum percentage was also increased by quite a bit.

Topic: Kongregate / Kongai 1.1

I agree that you should be able to reset your starter cards every so often. Unfortunately, many others disagree, so that was not implemented. The chance to win a card does decrease as you get more cards, but even if you have a lot of cards, the chance is still significantly higher than it was. As far as win trading using the new private match system: Keep in mind that we are tracking many statistics about each game of Kongai played that will make it pretty easy to detect and ban win traders.

Corin is correct about the stalemate issue. Changing range is free, maintaining still costs energy.

Topic: Kongregate / [Kongai] Card game FAQ - Please read before making a thread

droopy: If you choose “random all” your cards will be selected from the “starter card” pool, so you could have 3 starter character + 3 starter items etc.

Topic: Kongregate / Kongai 1.1

We released Kongai 1.1 tonight, less than one week after the “official” release. As one of the developers of this game, I thought it might be interesting for me to post my thoughts on the game and the release in general…

First of all, believe it or not, we care a great deal about player feedback and comments. I personally read and unfortunately take to heart just about everything that is said about the game. From the moment the game was released, the developers have had an extremely watchful eye on the player’s feedback and suggestions.

Releasing Kongai definitely had mixed emotions for the people who worked so hard on it for almost two years: On one hand you really wanted to get a pretty fun game out to the public, on the other hand you knew there were a few issues that still needed to be resolved.

So, with this first update, we definitely tried to address the major concerns that we had been hearing from the players, and in doing so we:

Significantly increased card award chance, especially if you don’t have many cards.

Added ability to host a private match vs the player of your choice (use the host game button in the lobby)

Decreased turn timer to 30 seconds

Allowed people to play the game without choosing starter cards

Anyway, the point I’m trying to get across here is: We care about your experience on Kongregate. We DO actually listen to your input. We WANT you to have fun while playing here. At the same time we do have very limited engineering resources, and sometimes performance concerns take precedence over more ‘exciting’ things.

Personally, I hope players will realize that we put a ton of effort into addressing some of the most pressing issues that were reported. I hope you all enjoy the changes to Kongai, and if you don’t, I hope you leave some constructive feedback for us knowing that we will look into it and hopefully fix any issues that you run into.

Time to finally get some sleep!

Topic: Kongregate / Ultimate Kongregate Photo Topic

Haha, when that Fox news clip aired, our site went down like Monica!

Topic: Kongregate / Kongai already has cheaters?

Nabb, that shouldn’t be possible, but if you discover otherwise please let me know so I can look into it ASAP. The server should be verifying any sort of victory claim made by the clients. I’ll experiment with this a bit myself this afternoon and see if I can come up with anything.

Topic: Kongregate / Ultimate Kongregate Photo Topic

We pretty much moved away from the bay area so that we could afford to buy a place, Colorado is very reasonable. Also, I didn’t think I would like the small dog, but she’s grown on me. My cat is going to be 20+ pounds so maybe that will offset the tiny pup. She is also the perfect size for battling with a Pleo, which is on my list of things to buy!

Topic: Kongregate / Ultimate Kongregate Photo Topic

At home just outside of Boulder, Colorado! This was taken in December 07, if I recall.

Topic: Kongregate / Ultimate Kongregate Photo Topic

Me, Nicole (fiancée), and Nola (Our extremely cold ewok-looking puppy)

Topic: Kongregate / This website blows

I tend to disagree with the original poster!

Topic: Kongregate / Kongai: Your verdict?

I would argue that attempting to do the same attack 4 times in a row is a losing strategy anyway!

Topic: Kongregate / Kongai already has cheaters?

I was specifically addressing the concerns about CE, not saying it was used to make someone disconnect.

Topic: Kongregate / Kongai: Your verdict?

Kongai is definitely not for everyone, but I personally enjoy playing a few matches here and there. Most of the delays on Kongai were actually due to the fact that we have been doing a lot of other work on the site for scaling/features, etc, which sometimes meant Kongai had to be put on the back burner.

As far as complaints that the card award rate should be higher, I wholeheartedly agree, but unfortunately it is not my decision to make.

Topic: Kongregate / Kongai already has cheaters?

Billy, the problem with changing it so that if you lag out you don’t lose is that people could simply close their browser if they got matched up against someone they didn’t think they could beat. This would allow for blatant exploitation of the ladder/ranking system.

Unfortunately the server issues today have been causing many more disconnects/lag issues than we anticipated. We are actively working on resolving this, and can only apologize and beg for forgiveness ;)

The game state is definitely all server side, modifying the client with CE isn’t too useful in this type of game.

Topic: Kongregate / KONGAI IS OUT!!!

It seems to me that multiplayer games pretty much get lower ratings in general since a lot of people just like the single-player experience, it’s doing pretty well, though!

Topic: Kongregate / KONGAI IS OUT!!!

:)

Topic: Programming / ATTN Kongregate staff: In-Game High Scores Don't Work

Sorry about this, we had to temporarily disable this functionality as the query was occasionally killing our servers. We should be re-enabling this service soon.

Topic: Kongregate / Kongai 1.7 Bugs

Hipcheck, I’ll double-check to make sure, but I believe “Random (All Cards)” can probably give you some replay cards that haven’t officially been released yet.