I see there was quite the hot-headed discussion on #wesnoth-dev today, which I think is a result of that we have some unresolved issued that should be addressed. I believe to discuss the specifics before we got a concensus on the fundamentals will only lead to tension.
As a participant in the "hot headed discussion," I suspect part of it did not have to do with the overall direction of the game. Thats just my opinion of it.
So, I would like to gauge where the devs stand on some issues: - Do we want to add several new factions to mainline?
I think the consensus has been among the MP devs, that realistically only one or two more factions can be added to the default era. We have stated this before, and given the response already I think this was for the most part the unofficial consensus reached. We don't mind having a new era created with new factions. The imperial era is the best example of this, and I think I speak for all the devs as we are happy to help there were needed. Personally I love being a Roman Legionnaire.
As for the default era, I think we're pretty happy that we've put together a balance that is almost completely balanced. I think we will never have a perfect balance, as new strategies will exploit unseen imbalances, and we've had to make some compromizes for certain types of games over other, but for the most part we are happy with it as it is currently. As for the addition of new factions into default era, we've yet to be given a proposal of a new faction that should be included. A cursitory examination of some prospective factions that have been identified have not been satisfactory. We can fix a balance, however we're not too sure whether these factions would add something to the default era.
With this in mind, last november, The MP devs and several others began working on a new faction that we could incorporate into the default era. We call this faction the saracens, and these units are based on the islamic armies of the 13th century. We've come up with several interesting unit concepts, and this faction does not use magic at all. With the help of Xan, and hopefully neorice in the future, we'll have pretty good art to go with the faction. Furthermore, this faction would be able to integrate into the default era without major changes to the faction or the factional balance. Hopefully we'll have a thread up in a couple of weeks in the forum outlining what we have.
- Do we allow for temporary (large) regressions in unit balance in devel?
Well I think we wouldn't mind doing it, if there was a good reason to. However as I've written here, I don't believe that many of these ideas are worth the trouble of they would cause.
- Do we want major restructuring of the damage types, abilities, etc?
My personal preference is to stick with the current system, because I believe it is intuitive and accurately represents damage effects. I'm personally against changing this system for a variety of reasons, many of which were discussed in Dave's proposal thread, and with dave in #wesnoth-mp.
Altering energy damage systems, is fraught with difficulties. Basically adding a new damage type as shadow by itself isn't unbalancing. We can tweak the units, and create an new balance incorporating such a new system. However if "shadow" is to replace cold as many of the proposals would have it, this would have a severe affect on the faction balance, specifically the Undead Drake balance. if we change the system to create a new balance, and give drakes a weakness, how is this different from having cold? Aren't we just replacing one damage type for another?
In any case Cold damage makes sense as a counter to Drakes, who are extremely warm blooded creatures. "Shadow damage" to me doesn't. Moreover we're similarly skeptical about the reasons to change holy into "mystical" damage. I don't believe that Holy necessarily means that we need a counter of unholy. I believe that the current balance is akin to cold vs drakes. The Undead are unnatural creations, and that they are weak to holy damage. Even if we don't support religious beliefs, people intuitively understand that undead units are weak to holy damage. One only has to watch the exorist to understand that. Changing it to "mystic" just obscures matters, and makes it less intuitive than it is now.
However we're not oblivious for the need for change. Several months ago, a Becephalaus proposed a system on the forum by which we could regularize how we codify humaniod units resistances and HP. I think this was an excellent proposal, one we should consider and possibly implement. This is the forum proposal.
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9460 Well thats about it for now. I may adress other questions later. Noy. _______________________________________________ Wesnoth-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
