Another less complex solution is to allow the player to change difficulty during a campaign. Maybe that could be implemented during this cycle. It's a fairly minimal change, and nothing would have to be rebalanced, but it would make a big difference to newbies when they hit Siege of Elensefar. If you find yourself in the downward spiral, you don't have to start all over, or even go back a scenario. Just dial the difficulty down a notch.
(I would still be interested in trying fabian's system sometime in some campaign or other.) ---Dan Gerhards aka beetlenaut On Thu, 2012-01-26 at 12:04 +0000, Isaac Clerencia wrote: > On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 11:49 AM, Nils Kneuper <[email protected]> wrote: > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > > Hash: SHA1 > > > > Am 26.01.2012 08:10, schrieb Gabriel Morin: > >> Ultimately if you have campaigns you need to have a slippery slope, the > >> alternative being that your skill at getting lots of gold and powerful > >> units doesn't have much of an influence. I don't think that having to > >> restart a few scenarios is to be viewed as The Ultimate Evil(tm): happened > >> to me, I was happy to find the way to play them better, and I'm still alive > >> today! If you worry so much about poor newbs getting scared, why not > >> provide automatic loyal reinforcements or gold on easy difficulty, whenever > >> you detect that the player is starting a scenario with insufficient > >> resources/army to win? The rest of us with minimal experience and/or a > >> brain will manage. > > I think this idea is the most reasonable approach, and it won't ruin > the game for anyone, but ideally it should be brought to the attention > of the player and be opt-in, so players who like the challenge don't > get automatically opted-in into some help didn't ask for. > Something like: > "Your current gold and army strength doesn't seem enough to beat this > scenario. Do you want to start with XX gold and get reinforcements?" > If we go this way, it'd also be good to actually count the times you > asked for help during a campaign, so at the end of the campaign, your > result is 'You have beaten the campaign XXX at difficulty YYY, using > help ZZZ times', and thus there is an extra achievement in not using > the help. > > Then in the iPhone version we can instead just sell help tokens at $1 > each (just kidding :P). > > > > Hmm, this sounds to me like a better solution to the problem. Lets face it, > > the problem is simple: > > > > You might reach a point where it is not possible anymore to win a scenario > > with the "resources" you have. Those resources include the starting gold as > > well as the recallable units. > > > > Currently to fix this you have to jump back several scenarios and level more > > units and/or play faster with better resource management. So the question > > should be: what can be done to prevent this from happening? For this I see > > several solutions (in no particular order) making balancing of later > > scenarios > > more easily possible (yes, they are partly drastic and not reasonable to > > implement!): > > > > 1) Get rid of gold carry over and just rely on starting gold. Besides also > > remove the recall list. This way every scenario would be self-contained. > > This > > would suck for many players since they love the leveling up of their troops > > and it would also remove challenges like "manage your finances" in a larger > > scope than just a single scenario. > > > > 2) Currently the AI is of a fixed strength per scenario. It tends to have > > the > > same units available as well as the same amount of gold, no matter how > > strong > > or weak the enemies army is. An option would be to change this so that the > > enemy AIs amount of gold is based on the players amount of gold (eg "player > > gold + 20%"). Of course the recruit/recall list of the AI could also be > > modified. Currently the AI often hast lvl2 and 3 units on its recruit list > > to > > make up for a missing recall list with those stronger units. > > > > 3) Add some way to check for the current "army strength" of a player. This > > strength does not just depend on the gold (since the starting gold can be > > adjusted by the scenario designer!) but also on the available recall list. > > Though using all units from the recall list is not valid here either. Maybe > > using the difference from 20 gold to the units recruit price (as long as it > > is > > positive!) as additional component to the "army strength". So a player with > > just lvl1 recalls that each cost <=20 gold would have his starting gold as > > army strength, player with many higher level units would have a > > significantly > > higher value there. The campaign designer would then try to balance their > > campaign for specific army strength ranges. Eg give the player more gold or > > some free higher level units (possibly especially ones that are harder to > > level like healers). Of course this approach also still has to differ > > between > > the monetary army strength as well as the recallable strength. So if you > > just > > have a freaking huge and strong recall list but almost no gold there would > > be > > a problem as well as with no recall list bug huge amounts of gold. Possible > > solutions in such a case would be a wandering band of mercenaries that offer > > the player their service for a "special fee" (as a way to provide players > > with > > huge amounts amounts of money with an easier way to get some higher level > > units that might be required to beat a scenario). > > The basic change on our side would be giving the campaign designer better > > ways > > to weight the strength of the player and base the scenario balancing on the > > current army strength by providing "especially useful" reinforcements, > > different enemy troop strength or possibly just a higher starting gold. > > > > 4) Remove the current system of recalling based on a fixed value and make > > the > > recalling depend on the units recruit price possibly coupled by a factor. > > This > > way the starting gold of the scenario can be set to a "more sane" minimum > > for > > what you most likely need to beat the specific scenario. > > > > There are possibly millions of combinations of what I proposed above > > possible > > and all can probably be done already with some crude WML hacks. Personally I > > prefer to follow some general rules though: > > * Try to keep the rules as consistent throughout the game as possible. > > Consistent here eg means "same rule for recalling everywhere" so that a > > player > > knows what to expect. At least it should be the same ruleset for one > > content. > > * Make sure that the player at least "feels" rewarded for something done > > really well. Currently this is done by giving "good" players a > > (significant!) > > advantage in later scenarios and often have "bad" players not fail in the > > scenario they are bad in but later on in the campaign. > > > > All the other things mentioned before in this thread are very player > > dependent. Many want to keep their "special" army (and because of these > > save-load when losing a single unit), want to see units level, love the RPG > > like aspects of the game. So yes, for those it would be a shame if the units > > would just be faceless troops and leveling units possibly has a rather bad > > effect on you. > > > > Personally I think it would be good to provide content developers with > > better > > means to judge the players strength in a current scenario and adjust the > > balancing of the scenario based on the players strength. Since I personally > > really dislike RPGs where the enemy troops level with you in some really > > strange ways making the game significantly more difficult if you just > > continue > > playing and discovering stuff (anyone ever played "TES: Oblivion"?) I'd vote > > for not taking just the route number "2" as outlined above. I'd prefer > > providing good means to follow route "3" since then the content designer can > > more easily balance stuff based on what is there and what is not. Of course > > this can also mean *slight* adjustments to the enemy troops (better/worse > > troops, free creeps, ...) to better match what the player is likely able to > > beat, but still somehow based on what players actually got available, not on > > what some overachievers managed to get preventing them from a too easy > > stroll > > through the park. > > > > Cheers, > > Nils Kneuper aka Ivanovic > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > > Version: GnuPG v2.0.18 (GNU/Linux) > > > > iEYEARECAAYFAk8hPc0ACgkQfFda9thizwU9PACfbFL2tDJM5f2RvWzw647zMCKI > > 0kYAnj7QnxP2OeinBBsuqUy0ORKQPlBp > > =9fyW > > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wesnoth-dev mailing list > > [email protected] > > https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev > > > _______________________________________________ Wesnoth-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
