I truly think that the Slurbow should not be included in the release.
In fact the inclusion of this unit, while extensively discussed on the
forum, has not been brought to the ml for discussion, but thrown at us
as a matter of fact. This is IMHO very bad style, and quite contrary
to what we agreed to do.
I proposed this unit back in December. Several other people had opted
for it as well.
When I made the formal unit proposition, no one bothered to respond
directly to it.
I gave him a weak increase over the orcish crossbowman in stats,
however, I feel that we should perhaps reconsider the stats of the
entire line, or at least the top two units.
Personally I am very doubtful to the advantages of this unit. I know
that the upgrade from lvl2 is quite modest, but in all honesty, have
we not before included units with weak upgrades just to see them
consequently be beefed up. I fear that might happen to this unit too.
One of the things that initially attracted me to Wesnoth mp was that
it required fundamentally different tactics to play f ex Rebels and
Northerners. They were different, they should be different, game play
was greatly enhanced by them being different. Sure they were not
really on par, since the factions grew out of sp campaign play, and
some sides were made for ai and some for humans. So, yes, in order to
make them work well in mp some sort of balancing was necessary.
In the name of balancing a number of unit changes and additions have
been introduced. Unfortunately IMO these introductions have paid too
little heed to preserving the uniqueness and flavor of the various
factions, and too much to filling perceived gaps in the factions. Gaps
that IMO originally were intentional. Not all factions need good
ranged factions, not all factions need quick scouts (if they have
steadfast units that can hold on to what villages they have captured),
not all factions needs fliers, not all factions need magic etc. More
to the point, not all factions need a counter-unit for every unit
available in every other faction. Then we could just as well abolish
factions and just use a single faction, hey why even bother with
diverse units, one super-unit that does it all could suffice.
I think we need to stop and reconsider what we are doing, while there
still is any kind of unique character to the various factions. I am in
no way saying that every addition/change that has been made is bad,
many have been good. But the principle for why changes are being made
have been severly skewed. While the game during the time I have been
involved in its development has been made much more stable and
polished, I cannot honestly say that game play has improved. In fact,
it has deteriorated. A lot of feeling and character has been lost. I
think this is a too high price to pay.
The good news is - we both agree that having original character in the
factions is a good thing, and we have fairly similar general ideas of
that character. We just disagree on the methods to reach it.
Jetryl, in your post you mention some very valid points delineating
what is the core 'feeling' associated with the Northerners, though I
am not too fond of the use of the word 'coerce' in this context. Yet
you still propose the addition of a unit in contradiction with this
flavour. In which way will the introduction of a lvl3 crossbowman make
players more inclined to use units strong in melee?
Nothing stops us from scaling back the power of this unit till it is
equivalent to that of the level-2. This, and keeping the current
experience settings roughly intact would allow orcs to hire archers,
but archers which would take a long time to improve and which would
improve at a much slower speed than elves.
Of course, this begs the question: "Why do that instead of leaving it
as it is?" Simple - three levels makes the transition less granular.
A little granularity is good, but too much gets boring, and difficult.
Right now, I think our orcish crossbowmen are too cheap and too
powerful - I think one good thing to do would be to scale the
crossbowman to about halfways between what the current stats are for
the crossbowman and bowman are, and then move the slurbow down to
something similar (though perhaps slightly better in melee) to what the
current crossbowman is.
This is where the decreased granularity in levels comes to our rescue:
If we did the following - make the orcish crossbowman take 150xp to
level, it would be a bad decision.
People would be irritated at the fact that the archer with 125xp was
not better than the archer with 0xp.
However, if we made it take 150xp to get to the same level of power,
but had another intermediary level, the transition would be much more
gentle, and would make the more experienced orcs in the middle just a
smidge more reflective of their experience.
-----
Basically, having this unit facilitates a change of making it much
harder for orcish archers to reach the current power of the orcish
crossbow.
If we tried that without having the extra graphics for a new unit, the
transition would be too steep, and too long.
By making it take too darned long for an orcish player to power up
their archers, and making the archers have a weak potential, smart
players will try and level up the unit that should be the core of the
faction - the grunt.
So, as much as it seems that the simple "giving another archer to the
orcs" would imply "more archers = better archers", it doesn't. By
having another unit, we can make their archers worse without causing
other problems, such as "too much experience needed to level" (as is
the case with the goblin knight -> direwolver transition).
-Jetryl
