Cancel build

[outtasync]

I know its been discussed before, I did do a search and all. But you really need an option to cancel build. I set a wall area and an outpost to be built, but then, because it was all overcast, I didnt see that it was almost night. And all my builders go storming out past the last wall to build. They get stomped, lose their tools, and I am trying to recover builders.

Im not asking to remove existing buildings. Just cancel a build order. Not being able to say "You know what, halt this construction request" would be a godsend. And Im king (or queen) and should be able to tell builders that I dont want that built now.

THats what bones me more than anything, fighting to keep builders because Im set to expand and either the builders take the entire day to traverse the kingdom, or I accidentally told it to take a tree down in a clearing FAR out of my borders.

[lefiath]

This was discussed over and over, you need to take responsibility of what you're asking your builders to do and when. They will most likely not add that option, because it's essential whenever you make smart or dumb decisions during your playthrough.

[Evo!]

Originally posted by lefiath | CZ:

This was discussed over and over, you need to take responsibility of what you're asking your builders to do and when. They will most likely not add that option, because it's essential whenever you make smart or dumb decisions during your playthrough.

Plus it would add to the simplistic UI

[Morphic]

Originally posted by lefiath | CZ:

This was discussed over and over, you need to take responsibility of what you're asking your builders to do and when. They will most likely not add that option, because it's essential whenever you make smart or dumb decisions during your playthrough.

....Except,

Originally posted by outtasync:

THats what bones me more than anything, fighting to keep builders because Im set to expand and either the builders take the entire day to traverse the kingdom, or I accidentally told it to take a tree down in a clearing FAR out of my borders.

Or when a Tower Mound is literally on top of a Farm Plot and you want to build a Tower but the Farm gets built instead.

Sorry but the whole "Take responsibility" argument is fairly lacking when there are multiple instances where a direct mistake of play isn't the cause. Yeah, making a Builder run out to clear a Forest is a bad move. However making a Builder chop down a single Tree ... then he gets waylaid by a magical spawn of Greed and now you're stuck with an infinite loop of builders running to chop a Tree, regardless of danger ...

A Cancel Build option could be as easy as Pressing UP over something that is queued for building. AFAIK the UP button isn't used for anything.

[Kamamura]

Originally posted by lefiath | CZ:

This was discussed over and over, you need to take responsibility of what you're asking your builders to do and when. They will most likely not add that option, because it's essential whenever you make smart or dumb decisions during your playthrough.

I can't seriouysly believe that people are able to conjure up such silly arguments only to defend what is a blatantly obvious design flaw.

Adaptation is a survival in any community, even animals exhibit the ability to adapt. If tigers starts prowling by a river, they will no longer come to drink water. Yet in this game, builder after builder leaves the settlement in the middle of the night only to be slaughtered while building a wall that is too close to a portal you did not even know about.

The game puts you into a role of a monarch - a king or a queen, as expressed by the crown you must hold on to at all costs. The most basic characteristic of a monarch is that the monarch (unlike a capitalistic employer, for example), is able to order people to do his bidding - to directly tell his serfs what to do. Yet you are unable to do this in the game - not only you cannot rule your subjects, but you cannot even warn them of impending danger, or tell the to join a battle that is raging on the OTHER SIDE of your settlement while they uselessly sit in their towers.

That is beyond ridiculous.

[lefiath]

Originally posted by Kamamura:

Adaptation is a survival in any community, even animals exhibit the ability to adapt. If tigers starts prowling by a river, they will no longer come to drink water.

You were saying something about silly arguments? You and me, my friend, have a very different point of view on how to make a reasonable argument, clearly. Now before you start raging at me, let me explain a bit further:

It's an intended mechanism, and honestly, the consequences aren't nowehere near as serious as you make them look like. The game is very simple, and you seem to be confusing it with much more complex 3D RTS - try playing Stronghold, that's a wonderful game that should be more like what you're looking for. But in Kingdom, you are in control more than anything, your people will do what you told them to without thinking, that's up to you to time certain things and commands for the best results. Think about it more like an puzzle game.

It's intended to be played again and again, until you learn enough to succeed. If it's not your cup of tea, it's perfectly fine, but just because you want to have more control in a game, that simply doesn't need it, because that's the point, it doesn't make it bad. This is not about game design, it's about what fits you and you only. And you're being quite rude about pushing your opinion and making it look like it's the "truth" because you've sayed so.

[Penfold]

Originally posted by Kamamura:

I can't seriouysly believe that people are able to conjure up such silly arguments only to defend what is a blatantly obvious design flaw.

In other news, the game of Chess has been thrown into turmoil as worldwide protests erupted about the lack of a "cancel" option in tournament play. Protestors were scathingly critical of the blatantly obvious design flaw that had plagued the game for over 1,700 years and condemned the Chess development team for having failed to address the issue despite multiple upgrades to the game.

"Of course you should be able to take your move back!" one protestor fumed, "How else are you going to win? This flaw makes the game almost unplayable. I demand a refund!"

Unconfirmed reports are just coming in from the 2016 USCF Open Championship of an incident where one player recommended "just taking more care when making your move" and was promptly set upon by an angry mob and chased off the premises. The dramatic incident seems to have gone viral on Twitter, with #CancelButtonsMatter and #Entitled2NotLearnFromMyMistakes trending.

A source from within the USCF, on condition of anonymity, told us "This is big — really big. Chess supposedly survived the Dark Ages, the Medieval period, the Black Death, the Inquisition, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, Civil Wars, World Wars and Terrorism... but the lack of a cancel option — that really has me worried. I'm finding it increasingly hard to believe that millions of players actually played and enjoyed billions of games over the centuries without such an option. This might be one of the biggest cover-ups the world has ever seen — I don't know what to believe any more."

In related, breaking news, it seems as though the incident — dubbed "Cancelgate" by insiders — is now spilling over into other games. Former world #1 John McEnroe has gone on record saying "Of course tennis should have a cancel option. I can't ******** believe it's not there already. Umpires and linesmen always expect you to keep the ball between the lines — surely they can not be serious!? A cancel option would have let me take back the serves and volleys the officials misjudged and let me win more games and win faster. Playing tennis without the ability to cancel was such a drag."

As tempers flare and protests intensify, the question emerges: "Will Cancelgate end the game of Chess once and for all?" We reached out to former US President and long-time Chess player, Richard Nixon, for comment. Nixon, who no doubt would have appreciated a cancel option at the White House in the 1970s, responded with an enigmatic "I am not a rook!" Hmmm...

Call 1-800-CANCEL and let us know what you think.

[Skymirrh]

tfw even mods do quality sh*tposting[i.imgur.com]

[Buntkreuz]

its ok to defend a mechanic of a game, but only as long as the surrounding mechanics work, whci hthey dont. The game lacks alot in that regard which makes the decision to cancel a command a problem.
Its not the non-existance of a cancel option, what makes it a problem is that there are several game flaws or design flaws which make this a problem.
When the game decides to randomly generate the build plots and lays several of them over another then thats not my decision, it was the game deciding that i cant select what i want to do.
So when i want to build a wall but something else is at the same spot and i build that instead, then it wasnt my decision.
When i want to send out my army to attack, but foolishly a build spot is directly layed at the flag and instead of sending my troops i suddenly give a build order, then this wasnt my decision.
When a command flag is above a build spot and i cant switch between both and i HAVE to build the thing or otherwise i cant give an attack command, then this wasnt my decision.
When i order a tree to get chopped down, but the workers wont go to the spot because the game falsly made it possible to give the "chop down" command while the tree was inside the forest and not on its edge and after that the game keeps bugged and they will never chop it down and i cant cancel the command to fix it because otherwise i cant progress any further to one side, then this wasnt my decision but a gamebreaking bug.
When i have built things and the safety of my land isnt longer ensured at that spot, i cant destroy a building to stop people walking outside and i cant do anything about it because farmers keep running to their farm outside of my walls, then this wasnt my decision, it was the game deciding that i cant destroy something i ordered to build.

When i cant command my people and they run outside although its night just to chop a tree down i ordered to get chopped down 5 riding minutes from my castle away, then this wasnt my decision but a design flaw.

Seriously. There are dozens upon dozens of issues with this. I could go on literally forever.
What is the real problem here, is that you HAVE to ride for a very long time from one side to the next, whenever you give a command that is very far outside and its still in the morning, until your workers arrive there it is night, because apparently i cant order them to wait till the next morning and then have them chop down the tree.
What makes this a real problem is that i cant queue any commands. I have to give them in advance and then hope (no skill involved) that they reach it in time.

IF this wasnt a problem, why is it then that they tried to fix it with several additions? Like the portals, your peasants running instead of slowly walking, building walls lets your border still be advanced (the knight flag isnt removed when upgrading a wall so they run around and around like fools), they introduced horses with higher stamina, peasants at least try to run away from greedy trolls and mostly try to get inside the safe walls before an attack. (sadly very very often they dont).
Because they know about these flaws and try to fix it with some changes and additions.
Problem is, there are too many occasions where you are simply unable to control the game. Very often you have to just bet on your luck.
Very often this didnt involve any decision from me as a player. If i could use a button to for example place a "do not enter this area" flag to prevent people from running outside, then many problems wouldnt occur.
Same goes for the random generation of the world which simply is not good. It really isnt. I have played many games with so called randomly generated worlds and although it only places the building spots and spots you can interact with different, it still is just not good in that regard. I had a session where my portals had a clear and good distance between each other, making it easy to roam my huge kingdom. In another session two portals were layed directly next to each other and on top of that on the other side on the other portal was a wall build spot directly above it, since i cant switch what i want to build, i obviously built the wall and not the portal.

Yeah, this is a flaw, not a design decision. Its only a design decision as long as the context around it fits that design. All the mechanics and design decisions of the game have to fit and work together. But in this game they dont. It tries to do something but the implementation lacks quality (bugs, no good world generation, not thought through mechanics, not working mechanics and some others) in a bunch of aspects which then cause problems with different mechanics in the game. That then is not design decision, its bad quality.

Im not saying the game lacks quality overall, its an ok game. Yet i can easily see that some mechanics and decisions of the game are only done for the sake of being different or "Minimalistic". Just not implementing mechanics or just not including comfortable features only to follow a so called "artistic vision" and only for the sake of making it different doesnt make it good, because many things exist in videogames for a reason. It just becomes a problem when developers decide to take out the wrong things because they think its "minimalistic". It is not, its simply bad then.
I applaud them for creating a game that doesnt need much of an UI and makes a quite deep game without overloading it wit hstuff like tech-trees, upgrades in the dozens for each building and so on. But in terms of giving commands, controlling the game and actually play it, they just made a bad game. If the overall package like graphics, idea, complexity and design of the world wasnt so good, the game would be a very bad game. Since it is, one can overlook such huge flaws. Just saying that if they didnt have a 5 star quality in some aspects it would be a problem, since it is a very mixed package game that has top quality in some areas but the lowest i could think of in other areas.
A game is a game when i can adapt to what happens in it. In this game you cant.
You give commands and then wait out how it turns out. After it is resolved you give new commands to build up again and then you again wait how it turns out. Since you cant cancel orders or destroy buildings yourself, you cant adapt to the game and how it develops.
When i have to change my outside walls and need to retreat to a previous wall because there are towers, then i cant do that and so i have to wait till this outside wall gets destroyed. Which is dumb.
Has nothing to do with a design decision they made, they just created a game that lets you do something and then let your luck decide whether it was a good decision or not. It doesnt give you any chance to react to something happening.
You can only "react" to something after it happened and you are still alive.

[greflanagan]

Bro, it doesn't look good when a monarch makes a royal decree and then decides to go back on it. A real monarch would never admit that something they decided was a mistake. You either work around it or crash and burn, never admit to the people you are fallible unless you want to be beheaded and your lineage lost to the darkness.

[greflanagan]

Also this seems like an appropriate place to say, I love all the overly long winded huffy and puffy posts from people who can't think their way out of a situation. Like it's the games fault you weren't paying attention. I definatly wouldn't say luck plays too much of a part in this game except reguarding the map placements, and that just requires you to explore and discover, like what the game is about. Although I'm a bit biased as I think this is one of the most perfect games ever made with a great and dedicated team behind it. The fact that some people find it frustrating showes it made you think when you didn't want to.

[lefiath]

Originally posted by greflanagan:

Bro, it doesn't look good when a monarch makes a royal decree and then decides to go back on it.

While our monarch might be coming from bum-fk out of nowhere owning just a fireplace and few coins, plus two slaves to begin with, and I'm not sure they can even write, I'll take this explanation.

I'm not gonna read the wall of text Nemesis posted, I have a general idea of what he's trying to say, which is probably something in lines of: I want to be able to back out of my mistakes instead of learning from them, the game is too difficult for me, therefore it's badly designed. Deal with it. It's really not that big of an issue and if you manage to screw yourself by making mistake after mistake, just start a new game. If you're not having fun because of this, too bad.

Few times I though to myself that it would be nice to have the option to cancel the orders, but again, it's not that big of a deal, what strikes me is that some of you guys just blow it out of proportions so much like you're expecting people to pay attention to you if you scream louder - valid opinion is one thing, going ballistic about it and coming up with ridiculous arguments is another. Having the option wouldn't break the game. But not having the option rewards those who plan ahead (this is called strategy) and punish those who don't.

[Morphic]

Originally posted by Penfold:

[Hyperbole of a chess analogy in an attempt to be witty while being passive aggressive.]

Except in Chess as long as your finger is on a piece, your move isn't finalized. Meaning I can place my Knight to D8 to visually see where it'd be and what could happen. If I don't like it there I can move it back. Essentially Cancelling my move.

Your faux argument was not demostrating a "Cancel" but a "Takeback". In Kingdom terms that would be like the ability to demolish Towers/Walls/Structures, which is not what the OP is asking for. Though I did enjoy reading that, made me chuckle for thinking if something like that would be real.

I'm getting really tired of the only counter-argument to "Cancel Order" is "Well you screwed up, deal with it *dons shades*". When there are multiple instances where it isn't a Player's direct mistake but a flaw in the game/mechanics and this is coming from someone who Speedruns the games because what little content there is doesn't add great replayability.

[outtasync]

Well its nice to see Penfold has that much time to be a ♥♥♥♥ and post a giant cockish comment.

A real monarch would get to have reports from his kingdom about his peasants and their professions, but yet there is no census in the game. This isnt a damned monarchy simulator. All I was asking for was the ability to cancel a build project request that has not been started yet. If a hammer has touched the thing, sure, keep it in place. But until I can manally, as a monarch should be able to, tell my peasants what side of the kingdom I want them to be on, all these retalitory arguments are completely asinine.

God, I forget how many schmucks post here.

[Morphic]

Originally posted by outtasync:

Well its nice to see Penfold has that much time to be a ♥♥♥♥ and post a giant cockish comment.

A real monarch would get to have reports from his kingdom about his peasants and their professions, but yet there is no census in the game. This isnt a damned monarchy simulator. All I was asking for was the ability to cancel a build project request that has not been started yet. If a hammer has touched the thing, sure, keep it in place. But until I can manally, as a monarch should be able to, tell my peasants what side of the kingdom I want them to be on, all these retalitory arguments are completely asinine.

God, I forget how many schmucks post here.

Just chillax a bit. Penfold was poking fun, mostly.

Don't let some of these guys get to you, especially when some of them are totally biased and entered fanboi mode.

[lefiath]

Originally posted by Setzway:

I'm getting really tired of the only counter-argument to "Cancel Order" is "Well you screwed up, deal with it *dons shades*".

And I'm getting tired of people who insist on saying that the inability to back away from this action is a design flaw, when it's a completely legitimate choice and piece of gameplay, encouraging planning and strategy.

I simply don't see anything wrong about it given the circumstances - if it was an RTS focused on building, I would probably expect it, but here, I just don't see it as an issue. I have seen it over and over, people complaining about anything resulting from their actions and blaming the way the game is designed, because it's just easier than be a bit humble and try to play by set rules.

Feel free to disagree, but I hope you'll come up with something better than "da fanboi opinion", dismissing someone who opposes you "just because", since that's as childish you can get without going full "lalala, can't hear you" mode. I've yet to hear something better than "muh opinion" argument as to why the inability to cancel an action in a simple game has to be a bad design decision.

In case devs eventually decide to change it, it won't be a big deal, I don't think anyone is afraid that they'll suddenly get one more option. It's just that some people here get really worked up and will try their hardest (which eventually gets unpleasant and funny for the bystanders) to justify that their opinion is the only sensible one. So I won't continue irritating some of you regarding this topic, and I apologize if I've contributed to anyone's high blood pressure. I've sayed what I've wanted to say, and hopefully, any further discussion will return back to be a bit more level headed.