Making Wesnoth less frustrating

[ryn]

that doesn't seem to fit KISS, where simple resurrection isn't so bad from that perspective.

[fmunoz]

KISS idea is no resurreection...(I dont like it)
Resurrection will break lot of things... (like "pseudo-heroes" in campaigns... units that has a kill event and maybe some lines here and there but can be killed without ending the level in defeat.. the Dwarf in TRoW)
But if people really lke it for novice players... a comprimise could be doing it in WML and include in in selected scenarios or campaigns (Easy diff, starting ones...) ot in the core game.

[aelius]

I too would oppose the idea of ressurection, whatever form it takes. Part of what makes Wesnoth interesting is the difficult choices you make in risking advanced units.

I continue to bang the drum that good scenario and campaign balancing is what's really necessary, and that gold is only one thing to consider. Upping the minimum gold in the later scenarios is a start, but there's more that can (and should) be done.

- b.

[Dave]

the problem with resurrection:
(player): oh, neat, this lancer just might be able to kill the enemy leader. Lets see.. (lancer dies)
(player): oh well, he'll be available in the next scenario if I need a quick fast level unit - I'll be able to finish quite fast anyway.

This isn't a problem. This is making easy level forgiving of mistakes.

That's why it's called 'easy' level.

David

[szopen]

Nooo don't do it.

Balancing the campaigns should be done by campaign designers, IMHO.

Correct me if I am wrong, but you can check the current amount of gold? And you can made a macro that sets a gold at certain threshold if player has not enough? Similarly campaign developer main add units to player (e.g. My name is Big Newbie Helper and I came to aid you in your quest) and whatever.

Resurrection is bad. How can you play lawful guy fighting agaisnt evil Lich who is using necromancy if you are using resurrection yourself? From RPG aspect is change everything tremendously.

[Elvish_Pillager]

As a side note, if I ever get this campaign done, then it will have ressurection as suggested in some of the scenarios in any case, which would be really screwed up if it was there in other cases. I suppose I could use different difficulties then.

[Darth Fool]

Maybe what is needed instead of resurection is some dialog the first time a high level unit dies that lets the player know that this is not unexpected. Something like Konrad: 'Alas, poor XXXX has given his life for our cause.' Delfador: 'Yes, that is what happens in war. I fear many more will be sacrificed before we see peace. You must make sure not to waste their lives, but you must also not become paralyzed by the fear of losing them. Let us continue with caution and daring in balance."

[Invisible Philosopher]

Maybe what is needed instead of resurection is some dialog the first time a high level unit dies that lets the player know that this is not unexpected. Something like Konrad: 'Alas, poor XXXX has given his life for our cause.' Delfador: 'Yes, that is what happens in war. I fear many more will be sacrificed before we see peace. You must make sure not to waste their lives, but you must also not become paralyzed by the fear of losing them. Let us continue with caution and daring in balance."

Nice idea. Although it would make it even more annoying to restart the game when playing no-losses, since you always have to click the dialog away .

[Darth Fool]

Maybe what is needed instead of resurection is some dialog the first time a high level unit dies that lets the player know that this is not unexpected. Something like Konrad: 'Alas, poor XXXX has given his life for our cause.' Delfador: 'Yes, that is what happens in war. I fear many more will be sacrificed before we see peace. You must make sure not to waste their lives, but you must also not become paralyzed by the fear of losing them. Let us continue with caution and daring in balance."

Nice idea. Although it would make it even more annoying to restart the game when playing no-losses, since you always have to click the dialog away .

Well, you could probably get around this by editing your savefile and adding in the appropriate variable declaration. Not pretty, but if you are playing a no-losses campaign, it would not be the worst thing to do.

[Matthias[Wlkp]]

I'd REALLY like to have larger cash limit . However I think ressurection is a bad idea. If someone wants his lvl3-4 units survive, let them work with them a bit - sometimes it's just as easy as loading autosave . I'm really ashamed, that I used this, but it helped me to continue campaign when I made a mistake just before clicking end turn...

I like very much a solution where you have beside preset difficulties a custom difficulty setting - using sliders players could choose if they want to have ressurection, min. gold amount, AI agressiveness, etc. I think it's the only way to make everyone happy

[Invisible Philosopher]

I'm really ashamed, that I used this, but it helped me to continue campaign when I made a mistake just before clicking end turn...

If it was just a mistake the game didn't let you undo normally, it's not so bad going back to the autosave.

I like very much a solution where you have beside preset difficulties a custom difficulty setting - using sliders players could choose if they want to have ressurection, min. gold amount, AI agressiveness, etc. I think it's the only way to make everyone happy

It would make campaign designers unhappy: they would NOT be able to test on every difficulty system, so they would most likely end up only testing on one group of settings, different from all others. Other settings would likely be unbalanced, and the author cannot make much use of balance feedback from a player playing with different difficulty settings. This way players would not even have a consistent knowledge of how much for each difficulty parameter gives how much difficulty, since having so many parameters would make it impractical for the author to align their effect with the "usual", especially since he/she does not normally use most settings anyway and doesn't know how they should be balanced. Do we really want to burden every user with balancing each campaign the user desires to play to his or her taste? I don't think that would even make all users happy.

[Jetrel]

I'm inclined to think that collecting a batch of high-level units is one of the most important things about the game - your high level units are analogous to your characters in an RPG - however, in wesnoth, not only do you level them up in individual performance, but you also build a bigger group.

We have two theoretical problems here that apply only to balance - scenarios can have a minimum "power level" required to beat them, but they also have a maximum power level after which it is too easy to beat them.

Note that neither of these deal with a third problem, which is frustration.

In balancing this, we should under no circumstances discourage players from amassing units. Making the possesion of high level units worthless will fix the second problem, but it runs directly contrary to one of the fundamental parts of the game. It should not be done, under any circumstances - we have to figure out a different way to fix that.

If we make high level units worthless, we should not have bothered even creating them in the first place.

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The minimum gold level solves the problem of the "minimum power level required". It is worth noting, though, that the time limits in wesnoth are harder on players who recruit largely low-level units.

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Different strategies can be taken to alleviate the second problem. There are many that would work, I'm only going to list a few.

I think that scalable enemy forces would be a good one - wherein, the enemy tries to hire a certain percentage of the "number of levels" you have in play. Let's say you hire 15 level-1 units, and your enemy is set to hire 133% of your unit strength - he will hire *roughly* 20 levels of units, be it 20 level-1 units, or 4 level-3s and 8 level-1s.

Another adaptation of this would be some way to code in WML that if the player is trying to muscle his way through a level by a "vulgar display of power" (e.g. hiring well in excess of the standard power level required to beat the scenario), then at some point midway through the scenario, reinforcements will show up to attack the player.

The "realism" idea behind this is that, if the enemy sees an obviously stronger force approaching them, they can, at the very start of the scenario, call for reinforcements from anywhere nearby. However, if the force is roughly equal to their own, they may underestimate it and choose to handle it themselves, realizing the folly of that decision as they start to lose, at which point they are a little to busy too send someone running for reinforcements.

[ryn]

The big question seems to be 'How many players could truly claim to enjoy resurrection, in any form?'

I am opposed to the idea because I would not enjoy resurrection.

[Cuyo Quiz]

If you have a circle, you have a circle.

If you don't have a circle, you better choose a path and accept its effects.

[Jetrel]

One small thought in favor of resurrection. Please don't take this to mean I'm choosing a side - I'm just trying to be objective, here.

a] Penalizing the unit with recuperation time might work well, because some of our campaigns have a rather small length. Really small, actually, for a number of campaigns - some, like UTBS, are only some eight scenarios long.

If, in UTBS, a unit was put OOC for two scenarios after the one it was a casualty in, then it would effectively be sidelined for a full quarter of the entire campaign! That's no small penalty; granted, true death is a much larger one, but for a unit that might take some 3-4 scenarios out of an eight scenario campaign to develop, the two-scenario penalty is not a nice thing to do.