Quoting "Eric S. Raymond" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

> I have recently had the experience of watching as my friend
> FadeTheCat, an experianced MMORPG gamer from the Windows and Macintosh
> worlds, learned Battle For Wesnoth.  She was kind enough to provide me
> with running commentary on her impressions and reactions as she was
> learning the interface, going through the tutorial, and playing Two
> Brothers.

Cool. It is always nice to get feedback, and even nicer to get  
feedback as insightful and detailed as this. :)

> Fade's conclusion is that she quite likes BfW and would even like to
> do campaign design for it. This is an offer to take seriously; she has
> done game design for Steve Jackson Games and was in fact the author of
> the rather successful Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls game.  I
> judge she has the potential to become an extremely effective BfW campaign
> designer, offering a perspective and approach quite different from
> those we have now.

Well, as with most Open Source projects, all she needs to do is start  
contributing. :)

> 1) It's too short.  She'd like the tutorial to include more scenarios.
> 2) Transition to campaign play could be smoother
> 3) Significance of the turn counter and time running out is not
> emphasized enough in the tutorial.
> 4) Icons in the status line aren't explained well in the tutorial
> 5) Tutorial should include an example of a loyal unit, and explain loyalty
> 6) Tutorial should include a neutral keep.
> 7) Tutorial should at least touch on damage types.
> 8) Flavor text and mechanics should be distinguishable or separated in help.
> 9) The right-click menu on terrain and villages should offer an option
> to go to the help for that terrain., and 'd' should work there too.
> 10) There should be a word-search function for the help
> 11) The mouseover texts for the top-line status areas are uninformative.

I can agree with all these.

I think it'd be cool if we added some code to make it possible for  
certain areas of the interface to be highlighted during the tutorial.  
For instance, a red rectangle could surround each area as it is  
explained.

> 12) Visibility for unit types in help is too limited.

This has been controversial for a long time.

I think the best thing to do would be to allow access to all unit  
types but make some filters that can easily be set, to avoid  
overwhelming people with a large number of unit types.

Enough people have complained about it that I can accept it is a  
problem though.

> 13) "Press 't' to continue" is misleading

Agree.

> 14) Why is there a time-left panel at all in campaign mode?

I made a change which shows a real-world clock in its place in  
campaign mode. Personally I think this works well.

> 15) Where are the female leads in campaigns?

I agree.

I would like to point out that the original campaign, Heir to the  
Throne has a male 'main' character, but has a very important female  
character who (spoiler) ends up being the true heir to the throne. Few  
campaigns have female main characters though. :(

It would be good if there were more. And importantly, they should be  
done in a sensible and mature way.

> 16) Unit types topping out at level 2 makes them bad investments

This is by design, and I disagree. It's a conscious strategic choice a  
player has to make between the long-term and short-term. Units that  
max out at level 2 should be easier to obtain or more powerful than  
counterparts that have a 3rd level.

What I would like to see is more units that have a possible fourth  
level, to extend the strategic choice.

Not that I'm excluding the possibility of some cases where extending  
to a third level makes some sense.

> 17) The way names are handled is confusing.

I think personal names for everyone works best.

> Mac-specific glitches:

I can't really comment on any of these, since I haven't used Wesnoth on Mac.

David

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